Thoughts From a Cold Beverage Drinker!

I am a social outcast. A man with no tribe. “The Norm” and I are not friends, we do not exchange pleasantries when we pass each other. “The Norm” and I do not answer phone calls to each other by saying “I was just thinking of calling you”. “The Norm” has never sent me a Christmas card with an in joke on the inside that “you had to be there for”. “The Norm” and I are not friends, because you see I do not drink Tea or Coffee!

Yes, I said it. I Luke Barry do not drink Tea or Coffee.

I can honestly say that I have never felt more odd or strange than when turning down someone’s offer for Tea or Coffee. Some people look at you with utter shock. “You don’t drink Tea”, they might say, “What do you do so?”. As if tea drinking was supposed to take up all of my time. As if things such as work and social encounters were just getting in the way of all the tea drinking I could be doing. “No I’m fine, I don’t drink Coffee”. “Don’t drink Coffee you say, however do you fill your time? Where do you go? What do you do while the rest of us are drinking Coffee? Do you simply sit and wait, twiddling your thumbs idly. The Devil makes work for idle hands you know, why do you want to bring the Devil into your life? Are you a terrorist? Is that it? A terrorist, here in my kitchen, not drinking Coffee, what is the world coming to? Maybe Trump was right all along”, is what I imagine they are thinking. They won’t say it out loud, but I can see it in their eyes, they don’t want to talk to “someone like me”.

I have genuinely had someone use the sentence “Sure let Luke do it, he doesn’t even drink tea”, as a reason for me not to take a break from work. The worst thing about this incident being that no one else present even cared enough to stand up for me. They just shrugged as if this kind of behaviour was appropriate, as if it’s acceptable to exclude someone on the basis of beverage temperature.

That day no one stood up for me or my rights as a tax paying citizen, so I think it’s time that I stand up for myself. I am tired of feeling this discrimination from the Hot Beverage community and I don’t think that they should be allowed to get away with this any more especially in this day and age.

It’s 2017, we have suffered enough. Last year we lost so many celebrities, including Prince and David Bowie. Both losing their battle to the illness Doctors are calling “2016”(#fuckyou2016) and still people are being, to quote some youthful types, “straight up haters”.

Now, I’m not in a million years saying that all Tea & Coffee drinkers are discriminatory in nature, but it does seem like the more extreme thinking of you are the ones that we hear from the most. You go to your message boards and forums to talk about “people like me”. You have your rallies and you think our feelings aren’t hurt by it. What you don’t seem to understand is that those of us who do not drink Tea or Coffee do not hate Tea or Coffee and we fully respect your right to drink Tea or Coffee or indeed any beverages that you wish to drink, regardless of caffeine content or temperature.

I think the problem here is that the Hot Beverage Community are not educated enough about people like me, they don’t know enough about me and as a result they can only see the differences. There is no need to be afraid of me or my people. I’m just like you, in every way, I just don’t like tea or coffee. William Shakespeare put it best when he had the character of Shylock say the words, “If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you offer us tea or coffee, do we not have the right to decline?”.

It’s 2017 people, wake up. We should be allowed to drink anything we want to drink and not feel the filthy gaze of hate or fear. We as a people have evolved so much, let’s evolve once more. Let 2017 be the year that people who drink hot drinks and people who drink cold drink hold hands and unite against the real enemy, middle aged women who drink bottles of WKD with 2 straws in it, because at the end of the day, those people are the real enemy. We need to build a wall around them and have the makers of Alco-pops pay for it, it’s the only way.