You know those people who annoyingly brag about switching to decaf? Well, that’s me now. Maybe I decided that I do not always want to be filled with a constant, albeit non-crippling, level of caffeine-fuelled anxiety. Maybe I was hoping I could lose my dependency on caffeine by cutting it from my diet completely. Even if you’ve quit or attempted to quit caffeine, I hope you can empathize with my dislike of feeling weird and jittery all lecture, but still craving a nice, warm drink to sip comfortably.
So imagine how stressful it gets when you’re halfway through what you thought to be a decaf coffee, when all of a sudden you feel that all-too-familiar surge of energy.
You feel alert, awake, and able to contribute valuable things to discussions. Your fingers start to tingle. You can smell colours with your ears. You start fidgeting non-stop and have enough energy to march back to the coffee shop and demand they give you what you originally asked and paid for.
What will it take, my friends, for cafes to give us what we actually requested? Do we need to articulate our orders so precisely that the barista thinks we’re being condescending? Do I need to yell “DECAF!” so that important adjective is not to be missed? Most importantly, when will I stop paying four dollars for something I could easily bring with me from home?
Am I being dramatic? Maybe. But maybe I wouldn’t have even had the energy to write this unnecessary rant if a certain someone hadn’t given me a regular coffee.
