Man-Rule: Don't Drink Anything with "-ccino" in Its Name

Once upon a time, Men drank coffee. And the Lord said, “It is good.”

And then somebody decided to mess with the coffee, and sissify it, and make it into a drink no one would recognize and which would take upwards of four minutes just to order at a counter, something like “Grande steamed caramel mocha espresso frappuccino with sprinkles and a hint of ambergris.” And the Lord was not pleased, but because the people who had invented all these new coffee drinks were making enough money to choke a Percheron, they didn’t care.

As a result, God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s in the Bible; you could look it up.

Today history is repeating itself, and we see “coffee” shops on every streetcorner and in every airport terminal, shops that appear to sell everything EXCEPT coffee. And once again, the Lord is not pleased, although this time He’s going to make us suffer a bit longer than He did the residents of Sodom and Gomorrah. If you doubt this, just take a look at the choices we have when we’re electing a President or members of Congress. Ours is going to be a slow, painful, shameful death.

I have to be honest with you – I don’t even like coffee. When I was a young boy, my dad tried to get me to drink coffee with him in the mornings by telling me “It’ll put hair on your chest.” When you’re six, though, that’s not a big inducement. Nobody wants to be known as “the hairy kid in the neighborhood.”

College is a time when many people, male and female, develop a taste for coffee, and in fact my roommate in college drank the stuff. However, he was well and truly addicted to coffee. The very first thing he unpacked when we moved into our dorm room as freshmen was his Mr. Coffee machine, and he began brewing a pot before he did anything else. I soon learned that he drank coffee before he did anything, period. He would set the timer on his coffeepot to begin making the first batch automatically around five a.m. every day, and he’d drink his last pot around seven or eight p.m. every night. I don’t remember him sleeping at all during the four years we were in college. Everyone assumed I was a big coffee drinker, too, because I, along with every article of clothing I owned, smelled like a coffee plantation due to the constant coffee fumes penetrating our dorm room. I was heartily sick of coffee by the second day of my freshman year, although in fact I never had a sip.

Even though I don’t drink coffee, I know enough to realize that if you’re going to drink it, then as a manly Man you should drink COFFEE, not some wimpy frou-frou wannabe drink. Try to picture Bruce Wayne putting on his Batman gear, preparing to brave the dangers of the night to protect his beloved Gotham City, buckling his utility belt and pulling the cowl over his face, transforming himself into the Dark Knight, ready to battle the most twisted and vile criminals the underworld has to offer, and just before he climbs into the Batmobile his faithful butler Alfred brings him a stainless-steel thermos made of weapons-grade titanium and says “To help you stay alert this evening, Master Bruce, I carefully steamed the milk to the appropriate temperature for your skinny caramel cappuccino with low-fat cream.”

Or think about this: At the beginning of World War II, the U.S. Navy was in a desperate situation in the Pacific theatre. The American Pacific Fleet had three aircraft carriers, and Japan had an eye-whopping number of them, something like 400. What would have happened if the sailors and airmen on the U.S. carriers had drunk something other than coffee to stay alert?

The Scene: The bridge of the USS Yorktown, 200 miles north of Midway Atoll, early on the morning of June 4, 1942.

Seaman 1: Admiral Fletcher, as the overall commander of our hopelessly outnumbered fleet, your decisions today and in the coming days will have a major impact on what historians will call “the single most significant naval battle in the Pacific campaign during World War II.” It’s entirely possible the overall outcome of our war against Japan, and as a result the political and economic landscape of the entire Earth, will rest on the actions you take and the orders you give during the next four days of the Battle of Midway.

Seaman 2: Oh no! The latte machine is broken!

Admiral Fletcher: Let’s turn around and go back to Hawaii, then. I can’t think without my daily shot of latte macchiato.

It may not be too late for us; God may spare us the indignities He has planned. But it will require Men turning back to our roots, realizing and repenting of our mistakes, and drinking simple, unadorned coffee again.

Myself, I’ll stick to Diet Coke.

(c) 2013 John Puckett