Tea

I'd be a lousy revolutionary. I'd have gone right back to England for tea, Continental Congress be damned. (My husband points out that I would have been a lousy poor person, too, but I figure if a revolution isn't worth it, neither is a marriage for love. I'd have married for money. And tea.) I'd give up lace, recycle candle wax, send loved ones off to battle, but without English Breakfast, I'd have just stayed in bed.

I used to think I'd make a lousy addict too. Drugs never held any appeal to me. Honestly, if you cringe at the thought of nose spray, would you ever consider cocaine? I've shown a reliable and, my friends assure me, aggravating ability to smoke, smoke heavily, smoke daily, and then just quit. Coffee, meh. And then I discovered tea.

I wasn't raised to be this way. Tea of any variety other than Lipton in my hometown, if you can find it, implies a sort of frippery. We had brief dalliances with Tetley in 80s in the name of sun tea, and college professors probably accounted for presence of the 3 stale, faded boxes of Celestial Seasonings on the top of the grocery store shelf, but otherwise, it was Lipton. Iced, thank you very much, not hot. If you wanted a hot drink, you'd break out the Folgers Instant. We were not a family that put on airs, and honestly, who washes down a fried bologna sandwich with ginger pu-erh anyway?

I wasn't raised to indulge myself in any way, actually. I wear Levis, despite the fact that I have no ass and apparently everyone at Levis' does. Great Clips sees me and my split ends about every five months. My summer sandals? $2.99 at the Goodwill. Cotton underwear, Suave shampoo, Cheerios. An unpretentious existence. Until you come to the tea box.... Shiny golden cans of tea mailed from Maine, exotic words like "oolong," various black blends, a French press, tea strainers, tea sacs, organic sugar, antique silver spoons - a smorgasbord of paraphernalia to stoke my addiction.

I feel sacrilegious saying so, but truly, the most earnest moment I spend giving thanks to the powers that be every day is when I'm taking my first sip of tea. For that split second, all is right with the world. Within moments that sense of perfection is gone: my tea is cooling too fast, I get distracted, I regret not adding a smidge more sugar, but for just that ONE second, life is without flaw. I can see the appeal of chasing a high - spending 86,399 seconds of every day trying to repeat that perfect one second of warmth. Of course, in lieu of estrangement, foreclosure, and pox marks, I just end up over-caffeinated and slightly unfocused. The nickel slots of addiction, that's what I'm playing. Lightly tendered gamble, lightly tendered payoff.