Some folks have anxiety about going to meet their maker. I’ve met at least one maker in the past year, and things haven’t gone well so far — for me, anyway.
If you were to step into the Newton Daily News office one morning and hear the “Rocky” movie theme music, there would be a boxing match about to happen. However, it won’t be in anticipation of a fight between two humans — this epic throwdown will be between a man and a coffee maker.
There’s no telling who’s going to win — but it seems the human is a serious underdog.
I have had little trouble with coffee pots through the years, save for moments of not paying attention, but the coffee maker in our newsroom really seems to have my number. Despite the most calculated adjustments, I am the only one in the office who manages to pour coffee all over the counter, on the floor and on file cabinets.
There have been a few fleeting moments of success, where no mess is made, but mostly, those are lucky jabs in a losing cause. The vast majority of the punches landed are by the coffee maker, and those are uppercuts, straight crosses and vicious haymakers delivered upon me in the form of coffee spilling on my clothing and shoes.
The brief respots of spillage seem to have as little to do with logic and science as the multitude of wasteful pourings that seem to be harbingers of electrical fires. There seems to be no pattern to my errors, no defect in the coffee pot, no breakage and no slippage.
It would seem the coffee maker simply doesn’t like me, but the previous office coffee maker must not have liked me either, for it fed me the same indiscernible list of spillage outcomes. Did the outgoing coffee pot make sure to tell its successor that I should have little or no peace? It seems so — and it seems the new coffee maker was all too willing to take up the cause.
Each morning I end up making coffee — which seems to be probably half the time — I try to go over to that part of the newsroom with a positive outlook. I even try to get things started well, speaking to the coffee maker in pleasant conversation.
However, the morning nearly always dissolves into disappointment. Like Charlie Brown, thinking I am finally going to kick the football, I charge ahead until that dreaded Lucy yanks it away at the last moment, and the coffee spills and dribbles around its station.
The first few times this happened, I tried to muffle the curse words one might expect to hear, but those don’t even come to mind that much anymore. Each new spill now brings a sigh and a sad, quiet moment — a time to reflect on the latest faux pas.
My co-workers laughed at first, but seem to have grown tired of my shenanigans. They have been very helpful and encouraging and have offered every suggestion and change that might lead to victory. However, the coffee maker still wins about 80 percent of the time.
Mackey Sasser was a New York Mets catcher who basically had major-league defensive skills, but often struggled with the basic mechanics of accurately throwing the ball back to the pitcher. I feel my struggles with the coffee maker are this same type of inane battle I must win in my head before I can make real progress in the boxing ring.
When the bell sounds for the 15th and final round, I hope I have the endurance to go the distance. Ask not for whom the bell tolls — ask for whom the coffee will not be spilled on the floor.
Contact Jason W. Brooks at
641-792-3121 ext. 6532
or jbrooks@newtondailynews.com