Too Much Coffee Man

I quit drinking coffee-- I don't know how long ago. I'm really bad at remembering how long ago things happened. A few months ago. Maybe a year ago. I don't know. I was feeling kind of sick, and I wondered whether I'd feel better if I quit drinking coffee, and I definitely did feel better -- except for missing the taste of the coffee and the rush it gave me.

Anyway, lately -- I don't know how recently exactly -- I'd have one coffee every now and then. And it seemed that if I just had one, and didn't have one every day, I didn't feel sick. A couple of times before today -- I don't know how many times exactly. Maybe 3 -- I had gotten a small mocha from Sweetwater's Cafe, and it was really good. So good that today I felt like experiemting and getting a medium or a large.

So I went to Sweetwater's and ordered a large. Then, while they were making it, I noticed that the menu on the wall didn't say Small, Medium and Large -- it said Single, Double, and Triple.

I asked, Does this mean there's 3 times as much caffeine in there as in a single mocha. They said, Yeah. I said, Wow. I don't drink coffee every day. They said, We can refund your money and start over if you want. I said, No, it's fine. I like new experiences.

So I went to Kroger's, chugging on my triple mocha, to get a piece of school & office supplies which I needed, but, for my 2nd trip to Kroger's in a row, they didn't have it on the shelf. (Kroger's was where I had been getting this item for years.) Even though I was telling myself to be careful and cool it, because the unaccustomed caffeine level might make me inappropriately excitable, I exclaimed, "C'mon, Kroger's, get your shit together!" And I may have said it inappropriately loudly.

Then I thought that the drugstore at the other end of the strip mall might have what I was looking for. Then, on my way to this drugstore, I remembered that there was a huge office-supply store on the way to the drugstore. I drained the dregs of the triple mocha, went into the office-supply store, muttering a bit, trying not to mutter too much or too loudly. I'm not sure how well I succeeded in this attempt to control myself. The caffeine was really affecting me a lot.

Sure enough, they had exactly what I was looking for, and priced lower than Kroger's, which should come as no surprise to anyone.

Alas, however: there seemed to be only one register open, and there was a line. No self-checkout registers whatsoever.

But, aha! In another corner of the giant store, a young woman was standing next to what appeared to be a cash register, and a sign which said "check-out"! I approached and asked whether she could check me out. She gestured toward the other corner of the store, where there was one register open, with a line. I said, "Yeah, but there's a line." She said some things explaining why she wasn't going to check me out, things which I didn't quite hear, we went back and forth about it, several times, finally I turned my back and exclaimed, "Fine!" and took one stride toward the register with the line, when she said something else I didn't quite catch -- she was soft-spoken, and I've listened to a lot of extremely-loud music over the course of decades -- and I turned back, and, to my surprise, she was waiving me in after all. Seemed all I'd had to do to convince her was give up. I thanked her several times during the course of checking out.

I was waiting in a left-turn lane at a stoplight on the way home when a semi pulled up beside me in the adjacent lane, which was a right turn lane, but when the light changed, the semi turned left, cutting me off. I yelled a bit before telling myself 1) that I definitely had much too much caffeine in my system, and 2) that it was entirely possible that the driver of the semi was completely unfamiliar with this area and was not a dick at all, but a good guy doing the best he could. The drive home was less than a mile and a half altogether, but I yelled at several other drivers, and then each time reminded myself that I had way too much caffeine in my system and that it was threatening to turn me into a dangerous maniac.

But I got home okay, and put some of that excess energy to work writing this essay. I hope you enjoyed reading it more than I've enjoyed writing it. This is definitely too much caffeine. It's not pleasant. Well, live and learn. Maybe wait a week or more before having more coffee, and then, maybe a single mocha again. Maybe a year or two would be better than a week.