Coffee Break
Coffee BreakBy: Sam Dodge
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Coffee Break "I think I just saw Jesus in my cup of Taster's Choice" -Zippy the Pinhead I sit on the bench outside "Caf� Kilim" a popular coffee shop in downtown Portsmouth. Friends and buddies walk in and I ask how's it going. They nod and come back out two minutes later with a cup of coffee in their hand. More people show up and go in and out each with a cup of joe in their hand. What is this drive to bring us here? Why has the coffee house become a social headquarters? What is this Coffee Culture and what breeds it? Down the street are three other coffee shops that are no more than 20 yards away from each other. The coffee shops for the most part are an attraction to the crowd that gathers on the streets during the day and night. Feeding the people their beloved drug almost anytime of the day. The coffee adapts to all seasons. In the summer the most popular being coffee being, iced. In the colder months people switch back to the hot coffee and the varying ways it can be concocted. I would never think that the coffee I was drinking had potency. A while ago I was reading one of those bathroom-reading books that had all the random facts and quotes. It said that if a person consumed 80 to 100 cups of coffee in a day you could go into convulsions and die. I have had bad days in which I have had like maybe 10 cups, but never have I got close to 80. I began to realize that what I was drinking all along was a drug. What a queer drug it is. Caffeine is related to other drugs such as tobacco, and marijuana, in that it grows readily in nature and uses its affect as protection from predators. To animals munching on its leaves it is poison. To us they are just great. This is most likely why many plants have adapted to produce caffeine. More than a hundred plants have been recorded that produce caffeine molecules in their seeds, leaves, or bark (Braun 107). Coffee and Tea are the ones that we are familiar with. Contrary to popular myth coffee has more caffeine than tea, it is near half the amount. Although, more tea is consumed every day by the world's people than any other single beverage (Braun 109). The discovery of the power of caffeine is one that will be praised for centuries. Throughout time civilizations have come to find uses and rituals for caffeine. Stories go back to ancient China. The emperor, Shen Nung, while making a campfire, leaves from a shrub, got in his pot of boiling water. The emperor tasted the aromatic concoction and was pleased with the affects that it had. This was, according to legend, the initial discovery of caffeine, which is dated around 2737 B.C. Later tea and the...
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