The Story of Ken, Tim, and Joe

I said yesterday that I'd have more to say tomorrow, and now tomorrow is today, and whatever I was saving yesterday to say today has evaporated. Luckily, something else took its place.

This morning, for the first time ever, I had a coffee before I left the house.

I know what you're thinking. Huh? Isn't this guy, like, 33 years old? And he's never had coffee in the morning? I call bullshit. Well, I'll be 34 on Monday, and it's the plain truth. Until a couple of years ago, my coffee intake had been limited to a sip or two every decade like clockwork: nope, this still tastes like crap.

Taste is supposed to be 80 percent smell. So if you like the smell of something, I figure there's an 80 percent chance you're going to like the taste of it, too. I like the smell of roasting coffee. But every time I tried to drink it, I'd be confronted with that 20%. Blecch.

If you're wondering how I ever woke up in the morning without java, I'll tell you. Even if you're not, I'm gonna tell you anyway. Ten minutes in a shower under scalding hot water. I'd just stand there, semi-catatonic, until I'd parboiled the sleep right off my body.

"A Shower is the halfway point between Bed and World", I would intone as I half-stumbled, half-fell out of bed. I'd hobble off to the bathroom, shut the door, and leaving the light off lest I popped my tender eyeballs, I'd turn on the fan (very important, that). Shortly thereafter, humidity in the room would rise to 438% and visibility outside the bathtub would sink to zero. The road from Plungerton to Commode would close due to the fog; standing in the tub with my eyes firmly shut, I could hear the foghorns wailing from Faucet Point.
Most of the time, I wouldn't even bother with soap or shampoo: the morning shower was therapuetic, not hygenic, in nature.
Oh! how I loved my showers. Still do, in fact. And they still do the job: just ask my wife, who is NOT a morning person, about how chipper her husband is before sunrise.

Something you ought to know about me: I love going up north to see my dad and stepmom. Always have. The night before a trip up there, I'm like a kid destined for Disneyland: I don't sleep much.
So this one time, a couple of years back, we arose at the ungodly hour of four in the morning in order to be in Britt for brunch. The morning shower wasn't doing it that day...I stepped out of the fog still half asleep. My lovely wife managed to croak out one word...coffee.

My sleeping mind recoiled as if from a nightmare. Then, sluggishly, my brain worked it out. If you dump enough sugar and cream into a coffee, maybe it won't taste so much like coffee.
This revelation came upon me with the force of someone turning the bathroom light on whilst I was in my morning mist. Coffee, I thought. I'm gonna brave it. I gotta wake up. If I don't keep up a constant stream of chatter, Eva will fall asleep at the wheel and we'll both find ourselves in a long white tunnel, approching the light...
The sign ahead said



Well, this being Canada, there was a sign to the left that said



and one to the right that said




Hell, sometimes it's hard to believe that every Canadian doesn't have their own Tim's franchise. They're EVERYWHERE.

We pulled in and went in. It being something like ten after five, there were only seventy or so other people in there with us. Okay, I'm exaggerating a little. It was only thirty. Thirty people and no food.
"We'd like to get a sand--" my wife started to say.
"Sorry", said the clerk in a tone that suggested she was anything but. "We can't make sandwiches right now."
"Do you have any donuts?" she asked.
"No! Not for another half hour." This time, it came out like we were aliens from someplace out beyond the Goat's Ass Nebula. I wondered for a second if I'd blundered into a cheese shop.
I regarded the girl behind the counter and for just an instant, I caught a glimpse of what was going through her mind.
These assholes are from somewhere out beyond the Goat's Ass Nebula. They don't know the schedule! They look Canadian...but they've obviously never been in a




before. Do I get my manager? Do I call the cops? Oh, no, the girl's getting testy.

"Can we just get a bagel? And coffees", my wife entreated, testily.

"Y-yes, sure", she said. Bagels. Coffee. Well, that's okay. Let's just get these freaks out of here.
"Two cream, two sweetener", Eva ordered. "And a triple-triple".
Holy crap, the clerk thought. The girl alien's order's okay, but the guy! He must live on sugar. Like that...thing...out of Men In Black. I better hurry, before he changes.

I thought about croaking "More" to her a couple of times, just for shits and giggles, you know? But I decided against it, and soon we were out on the open highway and the first sip of that Tim Horton's blend hit like ambrosia.

I've done a little research to find out why their coffee tastes so damned good...so...un-coffee-like. There are various conspiracy theories out there that Tim's uses things like nicotene and MSG. Back here in the real world, I've asked some longtime Tim's employees. They offer a couple of suggestions. One is the use of top-quality coffee makers that brew at a much higher temperature than your Mr. Coffee. That might be part of it, but 7-Eleven uses similar Bunn coffee-makers and in my opinion their coffee tastes like dirty shirts. Another clue: Tim's uses 18% table cream, not the half-and-half (10%) you find in many other places.
Other theories abound. It's the paper cups. It's the freshness. It's a little love in every pot.
I guess we'll never know. No matter: I was hooked right through the beanbag.

But a Horton habit gets expensive, even at only $1.35 a pop. Two larges a day will run you damn near a grand in one year. Hey, if you want to spend your money, you go right ahead. Me, well, other people have been buying me coffees, over my protests. It may sound strange, but money's too tight for me to be in our Koffee Klatch. Some days, there are nine people to buy for.
So, we thought, let's try home-brewed coffee. We know we can't approximate a Timmies--I've heard that even with an exact copy of their machine, brewing their coffee, you can't re-create the magic.
Solution: CoffeeMate. Or Natrel's Cafe, or International Delight, or anything I can put into a black coffee to remove the taste of black coffee.

We tried it this morning. Our first brew came out wicked strong. I had to dump at least three good glurgs of hazelnut CoffeeMate in there to make the cup palatable. And let me tell you, within about fifteen minutes I was fixing to kick the world's ass.
Ka-SPANG! I looked up at the ceiling and counted 3,489,295 stucco stones without blinking. For an encore, I calculated how much tea was in China. Then I started babbling in Auctioneer.
"see the thing about today is that it's Thursday and all the squirrels are singing did you know that no never mind I didn't either but then why? because hey! you never know do you and so"
---"Ken!"
WHAPPO!
Right, time to go to work. I'll get there and send everybody home! I can do ALL THE JOBS AT ONCE HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

So this is how you people survive on four hours' sleep a night! It's all so clear now!

I practically threw myself through the front doors at work and shouted at the top of my lungs "IT'S GRRRRRRROUUUNNNNDHAAAAWWWWWWG DAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!!" I started to sing "I Got You Babe", complete with all the instrument sounds.

Karen came sauntering up to me, took one look at the eyes going buggo out of my head, and said "Coffee, Ken?"
"No thanks, I just had one. Wheeeeeeehawwwww!"

About an hour later, I crashed. And I suddenly thought I knew something of what it must be like to smoke. See, I felt normal. But having felt so good just a couple of minutes before, "normal" felt terrible. And normal might feel better if I could just have a little Timmies pick-me-up, just one, you know, to lay the dust...
And Ric, bless his heart, had provided. For the rest of the day I was euphoric. Then I got home and crashed again.
This can't be good, I thought. One day and I'm up and down like a yo-yo. Drastic measures are called for.

I have now sworn off Tim Horton's. Everyone at work has been told not to buy Ken any coffee. Ken's going to have his cuppa joe in the morning--after his therapeutic shower--and burble through the day on that. Tim's will be a very, very occasional treat.

Now I've got to go to bed. If I ever get to sleep, I know just what I'm going to see: