Does This Mean I Have A Problem?

I suspect my addiction-free image of myself is flawed. First, there's peanut butter. I have an unhealthy relationship with it. I could live on it, I think. I'd like to try.

Then there's coffee. That reaches an entirely different depth of addiction, the "you can make me stop but you can't make me live" response to the thought of giving it up.

My mom started me. She loved her coffee straight and I grew up thinking that the number one difference between grownups and kids was what they drank in the morning. Hand me a coffee mug and I am a woman.

So when I was eleven or so I announced I was going to have coffee.

"Go ahead," she said. "But if you do, you have to drink coffee. No milk, no sugar, just drink it."

I was a stubborn kid. I drank it, made a bit of a face, then decided it wasn't half bad.

I've been sucking it down religiously ever since.

At first, it bonded my mother and me. There was something really chummy about hanging around together in the morning (when we both could), each of us nursing our coffee.

Then it woke me up. That helped when my first job called for me to be alert and ready to go at five ayem.

It's been keeping me going ever since.

As coffee addictions go, I know mine's middle of the road. I live with a man who is far worse. He has his coffee in the morning, certainly. Then he makes another pot somewhere after dinner and sucks it down as he begins work in the studio. Sometimes he makes a third pot and keeps it going until the wee hours of the morning.

He, however, drinks it light and extra sweet. Wuss.

My daughter drinks coffee and that doesn't surprise me. She's a coffee kind of girl. She's also a vegetarian, a former "I smoke cause it makes me look cool" smoker and a former reluctant slave to the Pepperidge Farm Entertaining Collection. She'll give it up in a heartbeat if she decides to.

What surprised me was when my son drank a cup. He's the family jock, the sports-drink and soda guy, the kid who loves processed foods and kept a bag of chips in his room for emergencies. Skittles? Mountains of them. I just didn't envision him drinking coffee. But he'll be 23 this year and apparently he's learned a few new tricks. He drinks it light and sweet, but he drinks it.

Look what you started, Mom.