Coffeemug: The Verb

another place to buy coffee

I haven’t made up many words, and I probably did not make up this one either, but let’s pretend I did. My super-friend Sandra and I are sitting on the bench outside a Peet’s coffee in a neighborhood where upscale grocery stores, artisan bakeries, and corporate-cool coffee joints sit their heinies down next to check cashing stores and beauty mega-marts that feature back walls full of wigs. We have just finished eating up our special rolls from the just-so bakery a couple doors down. Mine was not so precious because it was a cheese roll made with egg batter and the dough was dry. My Americano is poised on the perfectly horizontal and abundantly broad armrest of the wood bench. A woman walks up to me and asks me if she can have a sip of my coffee. As I say no, she grabs my cup and takes a big swig. I stand up face to angry face with her and almost grab the cup back from her, but stop as I realize I don’t want it back.

I need to do something because she—this person who probably has no home and who has other distinct disadvantages such as a propensity for grabbing hot beverages that don’t belong to her after she’s been told she can’t have them—has taken what was mine, my COFFEE. I flip out my phone and pretend to dial the police and yell after her that I am doing so, a measure that immediately makes me blush and continues to embarrass me when I think of it. I flip the phone closed and think, “like she needs that.”

I still lost my coffee, and she did break the law. Am I supposed to just eat that, or rather, not drink that? Obviously some crimes are more serious than others. Are some crimes too insignificant to report? I think the answer might be yes. The whole context makes me scream yes to myself and then wonder how I would explain that to my kids. And then I just get confused, as a large grey area instantly paints itself out ahead of me and right up to the coffeemugger’s heels as they disappear into the shadows of the 580 overpass.

I walk around conflicted about the reportworthiness of coffeemugging until we bump into the beat cop, and I run it by him. “That’s a new one,” he says with a big smile and raised brows, “You did the right thing not taking it back. I don’t even take sips from my wife’s coffee cup.” Okay… so anyway. I now use the term coffeemugging for when someone steals your coffee. Because that happens. It does. And it’s really Not That Bad of a crime.

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