Throwing Poo

For years, I have been a struggling minority, fighting to maintain my cultural distinction against the insidious man and his ruthless assimilation machine.  Unlike more disturbing practices such as recreational cannibalism or the wearing of white after Labor Day, my inherited custom hurts no one.   More than that, it is core to our people, and without the practice I cannot properly function in this world.   Yet America continues to mock my convention with a steady stream of passive resistance that pools over me to into a crushing weight of indifference, intolerance, and, yes, ridicule.

As an Irishman in America, I drink tea.  Actually, I’m a third generation Irishman with a little French, English, and as my dad won’t stop reminding me, “a heapin’ helpin’ of hillbilly” thrown in.  And like most Americans, I cannot function without caffeine (or Ritalin, celebrity gossip, or free amateur midget MILF porn, but those are other stories). 

Unfortunately, coffee, the generally-accepted caffeine delivery system in this country, makes me fart something fierce.  And these are not flatulence full of sound and fury signifying nothing.  I’m talking hours of curdled stank blankets that linger so long you’d guess they’d been painted onto the walls.  Putrid, carcinogenic methane mists that think nothing of hanging around my office until my 2:00 meeting with the new board president, who immediately wretches upon arrival and begins bleeding from the eyes.

These farts smell, is what I’m saying. 

So in order to function within polite society, as well as do my part in the fight against global warming, I drink tea.

Like the plights of so many other minority groups, I am reminded nearly every day of what makes me different, especially at meal times.  Take a seat in a diner, and I must vigilantly ward off an army of well-worn waitresses giving my empty cup the bum’s rush with the coffee pots that seem to have replaced their left hands.  Even if I’m successful and order my tea before they foul my cup, I’m usually left with a look like I just asked to suck a man’s cock.  When they return, it is almost always with a bag of Lipton and a tin of lukewarm water that stinks of cemented coffee sludge anyway. 

By the way, for the uninformed, Lipton is the hand job of teas: it’s cheap, unsatisfying, and leaves you with the feeling that the person who gave it to you really doesn’t like you all that much.

Being a tea drinker in a diner is like being Jewish at Christmas time: everyone keeps reminding you that you don’t fit in.

Then, a few weeks ago Nerdy Squirrel, Esq. and I went to Ireland on vacation.  Now, I was prepared for a river of Guiness and an ocean of fish and chips.  But what I wasn’t prepared for was a daily cultural affirmation.  Each morning I was greeted a porcelain pot of the finest piping hot tea, brewed with love and delivered with a smile, albeit a crooked one. 

Nerdy, an avid coffee drinker, only received a single cup of mud-like sludge and was well-served to make it last.

“Ha!” I taunted her disappointed face with giddy delight on our first day.  “Now!  Now you know how it feels to walk a mile in my shoes!”

“Are you still drunk?” she replied.
 
“Drunk?  Why…yes, yes I am.  Like a black man visiting the Zulu nation, or a Jew going to Israel, I finally know what it is like to be among my people!  To be in the majority.  I am drunk.  Drunk with the tea of Irish victory!”  I yelled.  “Tea at last, tea at last! Thank God Almighty, tea at last!”

“Congratulations,” she whispered and pointed to my plate.  “So why aren’t you eating your black pudding there, Mr. Irishman?”

“Oh, hell no,” I sneered and pushed away my plate.  “What kind of people eat fried blood? That’s just not normal.”