Coffee: Part I

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

I Corinthians, 13:11 (King James Version)

I was about six years old when my grandmother gave me half a cup of milk, added some coffee and sweetening and let me drink the grown-up drink. The sweetening was saccharine - sugar was rationed and too precious to use in coffee or tea.

When I went off to sea a decade and a half later, the only thing I had to drink was coffee. It kept me awake on the bridge during the mid watch. I drank it any time of day or night. I would have a cup before going to bed and sleep like a log.

I had long since stopped putting milk in it, but I kept using sugar. I drank so much coffee, I got coffee nerves. A shipmate suggested I stop using sugar. I did. The coffee nerves went away.

I had finally put away childish things - at least concerning coffee.