You found this child, so raise him

Somehow, at some point, and despite vehement declarations to the contrary when I was ten, I've become a coffee drinker. Regular coffee consumption is one of those things, like being a circus freak or alcoholic, that no one really plans to do. I know my dad started when he was in the Navy, which is why he drinks it black (like a man). Other people do it for the bohemian cool factor, and I imagine those are also the people who pick up smoking and irritating theological views.

I put the blame for my caffeine consumption on the fact that my Sense Of Social Norms says that it's inappropriate to meet up with someone to sit around and talk without also traveling somewhere else. My dominant high school social activity was meeting friends for dates at coffee houses, and my miserliness led me to eventually ditching expensive noncaffienated/ultrasugared espresso drinks in favor of regularly buying the cheapest thing on the menu, which is coffee. It's really just the coffee shop that I like. Coffee itself was the tag along younger sibling that eventually got accepted into the group out of sheer repeated association.

As noble and socially-based as my introduction to the Starbucks world was, my love affair with coffee houses has gone on long enough that I can fully recognize it as a guilty pleasure. A part of me feels skeezy every time I shell out $2.00 to consume what I could get just as easily from a Mr. Coffee, a little effort, and $.02 worth of grounds. But I'm not really paying for the coffee; I'm paying for being allowed the opportunity to sit in a paradise of trendy modern art and balsa wood and pretend like everyone in the world gets to live the Ikea dream. Sitting in the hallmark of materialistic corporate America drinking gratuitous caffeine and talking about unspecified things with a good friend is both one of the most disgusting moral sins and the ultimate luxury. Besides, how else am I supposed to know what music to buy?