Admiring the morning person while sipping my crucial cup of joe

Teen Voices provides first-person insight into the thoughts and lives of local teenagers.

For more than a thousand years, coffee has been revered as something mystical, with the ability to stimulate the senses and invigorate the body. The coffee bean, the coffee cherry and the coffee drink have been used all over the world by kings and peasants alike.

Tribes in East Africa would even mix ground-up coffee cherries with animal fat to make a paste that was then shaped into balls and fed to warriors to give them energy to go into battle, according to the Starbucks Web site.

Today, the magic of coffee is used to fight a different kind of battle: waking up early.

7:45 a.m. is a beastly hour to start school. But then, waking up early has never been my forte, even after I discovered caffeine. To some, however, the daunting task of getting up at the crack of dawn doesn’t seem so horrible. And they don’t even need the prospect of coffee.

We all know them: the morning people. Awake, bubbly and vibrant, they are the ones who bounce into class early, ready to carpe diem.

How can anyone be expected to function, let alone seize the day, when it’s that early? They are able to engage in conversations and exuberantly stroll through the crowded hallways, past those of us who are trying not to spill our coffee, not to fall asleep and not to trip over anything. They are even productive in the morning. This sort of behavior has always been confusing and yet oddly fascinating to me.

Take my friend Lyndsay, a junior, for example. We used to drive her to school in the mornings. I was always the last one in the car, dragging my feet with a very zombie-esque look on my face. She, on the other hand, always arrived at the car with a smile and a million things to chatter about. I tried — I really did — to chatter back. Unfortunately, chatter is not something I am readily able to do in the morning before I’ve had caffeine. And since I am perpetually clumsy, my caffeine intake can’t begin until I am sitting down someplace, not moving. So one would assume that, with my general non-responsiveness, the conversation would wither and die. Yes, one would assume. But no. It continued: Lyndsay talking, me adding an occasional “yeah” or “uh-huh.”

I can see how it would be just as weird for her to be riding with me, a non-morning person. But trudging through the halls in the morning, I know that I am not alone in my coffee-drinking habits. Many of the students and teachers can be seen holding cups from Starbucks, Dutch Bros. or reusable mugs that hold coffee they have brewed themselves. And on the mornings where I am able to get to school with more than three minutes or less to spare, I notice that the Java Bear, our in-school coffee shop, is surrounded by students.

Surprisingly, given my quasi-dependence on caffeine, it is the taste of coffee that got me hooked. Granted, the first taste I ever had was mostly cream and sugar, but as I started drinking it more, I began adding more coffee and less cream. Despite my love of the taste, honestly sometimes I envy the morning person. Then I see my mug of intensely delicious coffee. The smell gently wafts around me and I find myself unable to resist taking that first sip. At that moment, I know that I wouldn’t have it any other way. But maybe that’s just the coffee talking.