Remember the first time you had a sip of black coffee? I drank my first cup of coffee in a break room at my first real job to try to wake myself up. Looking for a fix, I grabbed a Styrofoam cup and reached for the handle of the pot. That first sip tasted perfectly horrible. Why would anyone drink such a nasty brew? It so happened that a box of donuts lay next to the coffee maker. I took a bite of donut to help with the nasty taste in my mouth, followed by another fateful sip of coffee and realized immediately how perfectly the dark bitterness of the coffee and the slippery sweetness of donut worked together to form a perfect union.
‘Rolls’ forward a few years, as in literally, several rolls of fat forward to today, and I’m still drinking the nasty brew, but now without the donuts.
That’s right. I just don’t eat those little devils anymore. Oh, I want to, I just won’t.
Standing in a breakroom yesterday, waiting for my turn at the coffee maker, someone pointed to the box of donuts on the table someone had brought in for our team to enjoy.
“Tempting, aren’t they,” he said to me and rolled his eyebrows around meaningfully.
“Yes,” I laughed, “And no.”
“Well, you must have a lot of will power!” he said.
“Nope,” I said, “Not really. I just tell myself, ‘Those donuts are not for me. Those donuts are for that other team.’
Yep. The donuts cry their Siren best, but no way would I ever be caught eating snacks destined for those loud group that sits over by the elevators. And it oddly works.
One day I imagine I will have to stop drinking coffee too. The caffeine will cause some kind of malfunction or unwanted reaction and I will have to come up with a strategy to say no to the coffee pot.
I know. I will just remind myself how nasty coffee tastes without donuts.
I do something similar for this stinking tinnitus in my ears. When I hear the ringing, I say to myself, “That’s normal. Everyone hears that,” and I forget to focus on it.
Orange Door Hinge 
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