The color of coffee

I’m 52 years old and I can honestly say that up until about three months ago, I had only drunk two cups of coffee in my life. I decided three months ago that I needed a little extra boost to get me through my morning workout. I figured coffee would do the trick.

I never have enjoyed the taste of coffee no matter what many people have told me. I have heard countless people talk about their love of coffee and how their blend and method of preparing it makes it a delicacy like no other. I won’t even talk about the

Starbucks crowd and their blind devotion to their venti skinny mocha chai soy latte or whatever they call it.

I must admit the coffee helps. I feel more energized and seem to be a little more focused in the morning. The taste is still not great, but I can live with that if it gets these old bones through the daily grind.

I drink my 6 ounces of coffee on the way to the gym. I drink it from a small thermos that I purchased because who wants to drink cold coffee. Forgive me all you iced coffee lovers out there. When I get home I wash my thermos and put it aside for the next morning’s brew. I have begun to notice something a little alarming about my thermos. The lid is permanently stained brown! No matter how hard I scrub or how many different cleaners and soaps I use, I can’t seem to remove the brown menace.

Lifescience.com gives the scientific explanation for coffee stains as follows: “As a drop of coffee dries, liquid evaporates more efficiently from the drop’s thinner edges. Liquid in the middle then flows outward to replenish the edges, carrying the suspended solids with it. These are then left behind in a ring around the edges of the drop when all the water has evaporated, leaving the telltale dark halo at the drop’s edge, with a more translucent center to the stain.”

I don’t really understand all of that, but I have to admit I wonder if this coffee is turning my insides brown. Think about it. If coffee can turn white plastic brown permanently, what can it do to the soft tissue of our innards? I know we are all the same on the inside, but are some of us more amber or burnt umber or chestnut or cocoa brown? I think the shade of brown would be directly linked to the amount of coffee consumed.

So if you drink a cup a day, you are probably beige, but if you are a four-cup a day consumer, your insides resemble more of a bronze color. If you are one of those folks that drink coffee throughout the day, your poor guts resemble a dark chocolate Hersey bar.

Of course, the thought of my insides becoming the color of the Cleveland Browns football helmet does concern me, it hasn’t stopped my consumption of the brown nectar. The way I figure it is, I need the jolt from the caffeine and where else can I get it. Oh wait, there is always a good old soda pop. Maybe I could switch to Coca-Cola, Pepsi or Dr Pepper. Then again, there’s that rumor about soda eating a hole in a T-bone steak overnight. So I am literally picking my poison.

I guess I would rather be brown on the inside than eaten alive from the inside out. But hey what do I know, I drink instant.