You know the look that people in the student union coffee shop give you?
That someone-left a paper-late look, that I-know-this-is-your-third-cup-of-coffee-today look?
I got that this week. I shrank beneath it, murmured a thanks so soft and ashamed it could have been mistaken for a cough, and escaped.
If I learned a difficult lesson from that night, it was to never venture back into the land of caffeine. Then my brain catches up, and I think, Maybe you should rethink that double major.
Goodbye for now, coffee cup. I know we will meet again.
Up until now, I've never been able to track down anything that really gives me a jolt. It's possible I reached some level of homeostasis from too many years of black tea. Then, last weekend, my friend Joe asked me to run to the cafe and get him a coffee.
Perchance I should have learned my lesson there. I should have told him to get his own dang cup of coffee.
(Just kidding. If I remember correctly, I offered to treat.)
Then he uttered the fateful words, "Tell them to add a shot of espresso."
The words stayed in my mind, and Wednesday night, when I walked over to get something before starting my paper, I thought I'd try it.
At 2:30 AM, when I decided to take a break from writing my conclusion, I wandered the halls of the dorm, pondering the sleeping breaths of my 300 fellow residents. Across the piazza, the windows of Louis Hall were dark. That was eerie.
But in the wee hours, nothing. No sound. No rustle. No boys bursting into one another's rooms to yell and wrestle. No shouts from the lobby. No girls calling to one another for hairpins, homework help, clothes, advice. None of the myriad of other sounds that constantly echo down the halls at college.
I was a ghost, just the slip of a spirit, made corporeal by coffee.
Because I could, I did a couple of pirouettes down the eerie halls. Maybe, I thought, I should do some jumping jacks. I had a teacher in high school who hauled us up for jumping jacks whenever he sensed the class was mentally less than present. Just the thought of moving that much after only dregs of sleep and too much coffee made my stomach roil.
I wandered on, caught, like Hamlet's father, in my caffeine purgatory.
At long last, I snatched four and a half desperate hours of sleep and thought, never again.
But I can hear it, that sniggering voice, the jolt of caffeine in my veins.
"Don't wait up," it says. "I'll be back soon."
"I was a ghost, just the slip of a spirit, made corporeal by coffee."
ReplyDeleteBeautiful. I think I only stayed up that late a handful of times in college; I never drank coffee (and I still haven't), yet somehow managed to be awake long after the rest of the world stilled - usually because of a paper deadline, haha.
I love how you described the quiet campus - that was what my little college was like, including the open blinds and the chattery dorms.
Growing up, my parents forbid us to drink coffee. They didn't want us to be dependent on drinks to stay awake... yeah. I guess we were good kids because my brother and I never felt the need to rebel and drink it. I still love waking up in the morning on my own, you know? I have orange juice, cereal, and drive to school. And I don't stay up very often anymore, no matter what deadline looms. I must be an old lady, haha.
I'm glad you're doing well - yes, you are! You'll get the hang of those deadlines and find sleep, but sometimes staying up just to experience a different side of campus is worth it ;)