This is My Coffee Cup

It has been for a very long time. I bought it 20 years ago at my first job after high school. I've had this cup for over half my life.

I still remember acquiring it. There was a Denny's catty-corner from the plaza that housed the Tower Records where I worked. They had these lousy, brown plastic coffee cups in the backroom of Tower, and there were hooks by the coffee pot where people would hang them up, often claiming one particular cup as their own by branding it with a Merlin label bearing their name. I had one of these for a few months, but it quickly started to taste like an old washcloth, no matter how many times or how thoroughly I washed it.

I used to eat at that Denny's a lot. It was open 24 hours, and you could get breakfast anytime. My usual spot was a table back in the "lounge" area - it was dark, sparsely populated, and you could smoke. I got to know the waitresses pretty well, and they knew me. I was fond of the grilled ham and cheese with french fries. Often I didn't even have to order - they'd just bring it out without even asking. Once I only had $2, and was just going to get fries. The waitress brought me out my usual, saying "here's your fries." I don't remember if I ever paid her back, but I like to think I probably did.

The cup was $5, on sale at the front counter. It had this heat-activated design that started out as a blue-grey, mopey-tired-drowsy face that disappeared when the cup was filled with hot liquid to reveal a smiling, cheerful-awake-rosy-cheeked face. I bought it, took it back over to the Tower back room, stuck my name on it in Merlin's heat-transferred Helvetica bold, and hung it on a hook by the coffee maker.

I worked for Tower for about 7 years altogether, at 4 different stores over that time. Did everything from stock clerk, to shift supervisor, to book and magazine buyer, to deposit clerk. Some of my closest friends to this day were part of that first crew. It was the place I met my wife and mother of my children, had some of my most fondly-rememberd youthful indiscretions, and made the connections that ultimately landed me in my current career. And I got this cup.

It's still my "work coffee cup." It's sat on every desk I've occupied since, through 7 companies (including a brief return to Tower during the cold spell after the Internet Bubble burst). The heat-activated feature stopped working long, long ago, and now the face has this ambivalent look - it's mostly happy in appearance and expression, but there's this dim, hazy patina of fatigue overlaying it - most apparent around the eyes.

Kinda like me, actually.

This cup is almost a totem, a talisman - like one of those "horcrux" things from Harry Potter (the things you read when you have kids...), it's more than a possession at this point; it's become a kind of vehicle for a piece of my self. Like me, it's survived well enough, but has developed a permanent stain, not unlike a well-seasoned Meerschaum pipe, from all the things that have been poured into it and drunk from it. It's loyal - perhaps because nobody else but me would want to have anything to do with it. It ain't fancy, but it's serviceable. It is what it is, and it does the best it can.

Right now it's sitting on my desk, in my office. I'll see it there when I go back in, and I'll take it to the break room to fill it with whatever is in the urn - hot, fresh, mediocre coffee, or tepid, stale mediocre coffee...maybe tea instead, depending on the state of my stomach in the morning. I'll fill it up and drain it several times that day, and the next, and the next. One day it may follow me to a different desk, a different office, a different routine. Or it might stay where it is for years to come.

Either way, I hope it doesn't get broken. I need to keep it for awhile yet. One thing it has always done well and it continues to do well is to suffice. In every way, it continues to suffice. Day in, and day out. Kinda like me.