How to be Friends with a Coffee Pot
Understanding the limitations of your “energy supplying” friends
I realized recently that I use the word “percolate” as a verb with relative frequency. Example: “I’m not sure what I want to do tomorrow. Let me percolate on it for a bit.”
I’m sure it’s not grammatically correct, but it feels right.
Whenever I use the word, I immediately confuse any of the 1990’s — 2000’s kids in my vicinity. Percolators seemed to disappear after the 80's.
But one of my favorite memories from growing up was my mom making a huge pot of percolated coffee in the morning. The smell of fresh coffee would fill the entire house and had the potency to wake up the neighbors down the street.
The process of percolating the coffee itself took forever — or at least it felt like it did at my age — but the pot would last the whole day. And it was *strong*.
As I was thinking back wistfully about percolators (as one does), I realized that they are the perfect analogy for people like me, and, maybe, you.
Most of the people who know me — even peripherally — envision me as I’m shown in the photo above: an animated conversationalist who gets incredibly excited about random minutiae of everyday life.
I’ve been told by more people than I can count that they want to hang out with me “just to get a buzz” off my seemingly bottomless well of energy. As if I’m a community coffee pot handing out cups of coffee to the tired, huddled masses yearning to wake up.
And you know what? I love that.
What they don’t realize, however, is that exactly 30 seconds after they leave I collapse into an exhausted puddle and swear I’ll never speak again.
My pot is empty.
FACT: Coffee Pots make horrible friends.
Since I discovered this analogy, I’ve run it across some of the other “coffee pots” that I’m friends with — people with energy in spades that always seem to befriend people that *need* that energy — and they all 100% get it.
And here’s the secret: we all feel like horrible friends.
One day we’ll have unlimited energy and spend hours trying to help random people we barely know figure out their life’s purpose, and another day we’ll barely have the energy to spend time with a friend that has more serious issues and needs someone to simply sit and listen.
It can be frustrating to be friends with people like us.
So, here’s a “How To” for those of you that are cursed with Coffee Pot friends.
How To Deal With Coffee Pot Friends.
1. REMEMBER THAT IT’S NOT YOU, IT’S US
Getting whiplash from how quickly we’ve gone from “crazy, energetic, talkative friend” to “friend who can barely form full sentences?”
Don’t worry — it’s not something you said.
There is no fuel tank indicator that will light up when we’re running out of energy. We just kind of… fizzle… quietly. Towards the end of our pot we become the hollow men that T. S. Eliot referenced who go out “not with a bang but with a whimper.”
2. WHAT NOT TO DO
Trying to get some sort of explanation from us about our suddenly becoming quiet only makes us quieter, because then we also launch our “Worry Sequence.”
When Worry Sequence is initiated, we worry that you’re upset and we have to figure out how to explain that it’s nothing you’ve done, which involves lugging the words down from our temporal lobe to our vocal chords and attempting to articulate them with some level of sophistication.
And that amount of lugging requires energy. Which we no longer have.
Just let us take a nap. It’s easier for everyone.
3. HOW TO REFILL THE POT
For anyone who has ever worked in an office, you know how frustrating it is to go into the break room to get some coffee, only to discover that some unholy douche canoe left exactly 1 ounce of coffee at the bottom of the pot.
Who do you get mad at? The pot or the douche canoe?
(I *really* hope you said the douche canoe, otherwise this entire analogy won’t work.)
Basically what I’m trying to say here is, please don’t get mad at the pot. You know that old saying: “Neither guilt nor passive aggressiveness a new pot of coffee makes?” Of course you do. (just go with it) And that’s because it’s so, so true.
You know what *does* make a new pot of coffee? Some great coffee beans (inspiration), water (water), and plenty of time for it to percolate. And the best part is, you’ll know as soon as the pot is refilled, because we’ll be back to our perky, chatty, energetic selves pestering you with conversations about the universe, or, you know, belly button lint.
4. DO YOU NEED TO FEEL BAD ABOUT TAKING A CUP OF COFFEE OUT OF THE POT?
Does any self-respecting coffee pot want all the coffee to just sit there? Absolutely not! Coffee is meant to be shared. And we are so, SO excited to share with you.
Sometimes we can even accidentally brew too much, and the overflow that ensues can get really annoying to deal with. So it’s actually in everyone’s best interest for you to take a cup whenever you can so we *don’t* overflow.
So go ahead. Drink up.
The final sip.
Okay, so I think I’ve stretched this coffee pot analogy as far as it can go. Are we all clear on the terms and the implications? Yes? Good.
Because I need to go and get a cup of coffee.
xx
