Coffee? No, Thanks...I'd Rather Not Torture My Taste Buds

Making my usual rounds of the Internets this morning before I start on the list of things I need to get done today, I came upon this post from John Scalzi, over at his blog, Whatever, in which he proclaims that coffee "tastes like ass".

It is so nice to find someone else who agrees with me about coffee. Which is to say, someone else who thinks coffee tastes nasty.

I get so tired of people looking at me like I've suddenly sprouted a second head out the top of my regular head, complete with a third eye in the middle of its forehead, when I say that I don't like coffee. I have to confess that I haven't really researched the history of coffee - I don't care enough to put in the time to do that - but I have wondered from time to time what the deal is...how did our culture here in the United States come to the point where it is assumed that everyone drinks coffee, and that people who don't do so are somehow wrong. No, really. I've heard people insist that unless you drink coffee, you are not a proper adult.

It is just as tiresome when people ask me, "Is it because you used to be Mormon?"

No. My distaste for coffee - for all hot beverages, for that matter - came long before I ever was a Mormon. My dad started trying to turn me into a coffee drinker when I was about ten years old. My mom didn't drink coffee, and so he tried to get me started on it so that he would have someone to have a cup of coffee with in the morning.

His efforts never succeeded. Even getting past the fact that coffee is hot, which is difficult enough for me to get beyond, it just tastes awful. I don't care how much you dress it up with cream, sugar, or other flavors, there is still that underlying bitter, acidy taste that Is. Just. Not. Right.

The funny thing was that my mom always used to say that while she didn't like the taste of coffee, she loved the smell. I've heard others rhapsodize about how wonderful coffee smells.

No it doesn't. It smells as bad as it tastes.

But, you know, I'm not the judgmental type. So, go ahead. Drink that coffee. I don't understand the attraction, but whatever. Just don't act like there is something wrong with me because I don't drink it. Would you like it if I insisted that you are not a proper adult because you don't like the thing you really, really don't like? Say, broccoli? Peas?

I didn't think so.