pumpkin cream

I bought a cup of coffee and a sausage sandwich today at the gas station. Both were adventures, and neither was totally a disappointment. The sandwich was heavyladen with greasy, sugary wonderfulness, and the coffee was, in a word, caffeinated.

Purity is usually essential to me, in evaluating a cup of coffee. I never muck mine up with cream and sugar, and certainly not with non-dairy cream and fake sugar. Cream goes on oatmeal, and sugar goes in cookies (and gas station sandwiches); coffee is a blessed moment set aside for caffeine alone.

Except today. Today, I was lured by the vast, colorful display of little creamer cups in the rack beside the go-lids. Pink ones, green ones, blue ones... I do love color. There were the old standards- French Vanilla, Irish Cream, Hazelnut- the stolid creamer flavors that add stability to an ever-changing world.

Mixed in among the standards, though, were newfangled oddities like Cinnamon Hazelnut and Pumpkin Spice. "Pumpkin Spice!" I thought. I free associated: coffee-> hot drinks-> Mormons-> college-> Java 101-> chai! That was it- chai always makes me think of pumpkin pie, which I love! Maybe, just maybe, my coffee could taste like pumpkin pie, too? I poured in two creamers with bated breath, and waited for the concoction to cool.

Of course, I didn't experience the rapturous delight for which I had been stoking myself. Pumpkins are good, sugar is good, and coffee is superb, but they don't all go in the same cup. I missed the bitter bite of my old friend- nothing washes down greasy sausage like black gas station coffee.

I may have to walk back to the gas station for a plain cup of coffee, just to wash the sugary taste out of my mouth. However, my return trip to Speedway will be as a more experienced person, wiser for having learned an important lesson about being true to myself. I must not be swayed by the pressures of this world, no matter how colorful and potentially promising they may be. I am a woman who likes her coffee black, and while openness to new experiences is to be appreciated, in the end I still like my coffee black. And it was good.

I'm preaching tomorrow in chapel, using a version of the same sermon that I preached at home. I should be revising and practicing... but I'm considering offering a five minute testimony on the importance of integrity in hot drink choices and then leaving the rest of the meeting for silence.