I know you are all being super patient with me (that's a good joke, right?) because I've been in a state of limbo the last week and a half. I'm living at home with my family while I await further word from an apartment complex in my dream city. Unfortunately, the people with the power are being slightly less than cooperative. So, I've been mostly packed and ready to go for the whole time. Which is really starting to get old. It's hard not knowing if you'll be moving or not. But I'm still having fun here, so it's not all bad. Anyways, I've decided that there haven't been enough funny stories on my blog lately. Thus, I have decided to give you all an extra special treat tonight. I'm going to tell you about the first time I successfully finished a cup of that awful, evil, gross, despicable, poisonous brown liquid that you all call coffee...
It all started as a science experiment. A friend and coworker of mine approached me one day at work. She asked me if I wanted to help her out by being one of her test subjects for some science class or another (I think it was like research methods or some rubbish like that...). The experiment was designed to test the effects of caffeine on a person's reaction times. Unfortunately, my friend used coffee as the delivery agent for the caffeine. I had avoided coffee out of habit. It just never seemed like a good idea to me, plus I always had soda to quench my caffeine addiction (don't judge me, I was in college!). But, I still agreed to drink the whole cup of coffee. Oh, did I mention that we were both working at the time. Yep. And it was like 7:30 in the evening when this was happening. Just a little background for this story. So she went back into our workplace's kitchen and brewed up a cup of coffee. A little while later, she declared that the coffee was ready and asked me if i wanted sugar and creamer. Of course, I replied. Have added those necessary ingredients, she handed me my very warm cup of coffee. (sidetrack, I don't like drinking hot drinks. So, I always have to let them sit for a long time before drinking them) After the appropriate amount of waiting for the coffee to cool, I took my first sip. It definitely did not taste good. However, I'm a real trooper when it comes to helping my friends pass class (as opposed to gas). It took me almost twenty minutes, but I finally finished my first cup of coffee. By the end of the cup, I was starting to feel a little...weird. Not bad, per se. But something was definitely happening. The jitters followed this weird feeling. It was at this time that she decided to test my reactions. It was a typical test. She held a ruler a certain distance from my fingers, then she'd release the ruler and I would try to catch it before it hit the ground. The distance that it fell would determine how fast my reactions were under the influence of caffeine. After a couple of false starts on my part (I was super jittery at this point), we finally made it through all 5 test runs. It was at this point that we realized that we had forgotten to do the control test (apparently this is important in science...who knew?????), but it was too late to do anything about it. We agreed to do the control tests the next day when the caffeine would be out of my system (believe it or not, there are times of the day when I'm not hyped up on caffeine).
And then disaster struck. My body decided that coffee was disgusting. I noticed that I felt feverish, and my stomach was very upset. Now, I'm no stranger to nausea, but I definitely didn't want anything coming back up at work! (that's almost a nightmare right there) I'm also no stranger to controlling nausea, fortunately. So, I walked slowly to the men's room, and sat down with my back against the wall, close to the toilet. I sat there for almost half an hour before I felt stable enough to leave. When I came back out to my work desk, my friend sighed in relief. She had freaked out when I left for the bathroom because when I feel nausea, my face turns ghostly pale. I came out with a little more color in my face, but I was weak on my legs from the caffeine-nausea mix. I sent an email to my boss explaining that I had missed the last half hour of my shift due to this unfortunate side-effect of coffee, and I went back up to my dorm. The caffeine kept me awake and wired much later than I anticipated.
~The Piebald Penguin
