The Fair Trade Delta

I really worry that there is some synapse in my brain starving for neurological activity. I'm just envisioning one of those teachers' aid videos they used to show in my PSYC 101 class, where a computer generated image of some piece of brain is short circuiting with those little flashes of lightning. This is what your brain should not look like. This is what my brain does look like.




My mom always tells me how special I am, which must mean I am retarded. Seriously, what kind of person, when trying to make coffee in the morning, fills up the filter with grounds, pours a couple of cups of water into the back of the machine, closes the lid, plugs it in, hits start and walks away, without remembering to put the goddamn coffee pot on the hot plate, four times?

One, two, three, four times.

I come back from the shower, half awake and ready for the second leg of my morning pick me up, only to find that my kitchen counter has once again become a floodplain for my organic Fair Trade French Roast (the only hippie product I always buy, since I dated the president of the UVa Fair Trade chapter during college). God, freaking, damnit. How am I expected to handle bills and taxes and developing a good credit history when I can't even remember to put the pot under the flow of coffee?

The only good thing about my shed having been built on a series of slants and leans is that it turns my counter into a nice little delta, so that I can just sponge all the coffee right out.

What can I do about this problem? Remind myself to be more observant? That's the entire point: I keep forgetting about it no matter how many times it happens. It's the same issue I deal with in not noticing huge restaurant signs three blocks from my house, no matter how many times I drive by them: you can't 'remind yourself' to be more observant. You're either oblivious or not. I am oblivious. Sure, I won't make the same coffee pot mistake tomorrow, or the next day. Probably won't even do it again this week, because it will be fresh in my memory. But I guarantee you, this will happen again within the next month.

"Why don't you write a post it note to yourself and stick it on your cabinet?"

Uhhh, maybe because everyone else who comes over would see it?

"Why don't you just always leave the pot in the machine, that way this problem will never happen?"

Why don't you just shut the hell up?

"Well you're probably pretty tired when you make this mistake," a sympathetic female might say. After all, my routine is wake up, groggily stumble into the other room, set up the post-shower coffee, and groggily stumble into the bathroom, so that I can maximize efficiency and have a fresh pot waiting for me when I emerge. The first three times this happened, that could have been my alibi. But today, it happened post-shower, after I'd been jolted out of the doldrums which heretofore were my only excuse for being so out to lunch.

Which is why all I can envision is that computer generated brain synapse shorting out like a worn down wire on an old electric grid.

And thank God it was post shower for once, because I realized what I'd done before it was too late and, running over to the counter like a Villanova guard going coast to coast, was able to slide the pot right in there just in time to prevent another flood. Mr. Coffee, my only roommate, will try to hold off for a minute or two when its A.I. components realize that I've forgotten, once again, to put the pot on. But it can't wait forever. All that brewing coffee can only back up so much before it overflows and spills out the top. It's like (a guy) trying to take a piss and then pinching it: you've got about three seconds in you before your urethra starts to feel like an international convention of fire ants.

Not even Mr. Coffe can hold out forever before he pisses his pants.