This post by Ellyn vonHuben of Oblique House got me to thinking
about my first experiences with coffee. I use to go to work with my father who
was an actor and puppeteer in a children’s theater at the Portland Zoo. This
theater quaintly called the Ladybug Theater was in the shape of a you-guessed-it
a ladybug and had toadstools for chairs (actually more like knee or shin
destroyers for those not careful moving through a darkened theater). This
theater was later burned down by the security guard hired to protect zoo
property, obviously this security guard had been greatly influenced by the
childhood song “Ladybug, Ladybug fly away home your house is on fire.” My father
use to drop me off at a Denny’s while he would go into a bar with his friends.
You could only nurse a coke for so long to try to pass time so I started
ordering coffee since I had observed that coffee drinkers got free refills. I
was around the age of ten and so I made my coffee as close to hot chocolate in
taste and appearance as possible by filling it with massive dosages of cream and
sugar. One day a waitress there asked me “Don’t you know that coffee will stunt
your growth?” I replied in my best geriatric impersonation “I am 60 years old
and it hasn’t affected me yet.” Well the waitress was probably expecting any
reply but that one and left laughing. No surprise that I was an equally strange
kid.
