In Defense Of My Thermos
’Tis the season for beverages that stay hot all day long.
It is Fall. Orange leaves are dropping from the trees. And yes, there’s some wind. It’s actually unseasonably hot where I live but that’s beside the point. Because of the season, and in defiance of the warm weather, I have switched from iced and/or cold-brewed beverages to several alternating hot brown potions that I carry with me, by my side, in my trusty thermos. I am not alone in drinking this liquid. But I am the only one who drinks it this way. Why is that? I’ve found editors’ arguments against my thermos far off-base.
I begin my day like everyone else, waking up sometime between 6 a.m. and noon p.m. I make my coffee at home, drinking it from one of my many mugs, and if I have to leave the house before I’ve finished my fourth cup, I pour it into my thermos. Ah! The “pour,” one of my favorite parts of my thermos, the others being nearly everything about my thermos, including the temperature, the shape, the color, and the ability to keep liquid from getting on my other stuff. It is the phallic fount from which I sip. Canteen critics and decanter detractors alike have tried to stop me, with their words, which are negative, about my thermos. But I defiantly carry my thermos to provide steamy sustenance when I am riding my bike even though I know drinking coffee while exercising literally makes me more dehydrated. Have anything to say to that, haters (of my thermos)?
As I live my caffeinated, energetic lifestyle, carrying my couture canteen in my book bag, or sometimes simply in my hand, I look around me. Some people, ones who aren’t me, take their coffee in paper cups. I take that as an affront. For one, it is my belief that the invention of the protective corrugated cardboard sleeve is singlehandedly responsible for the devastating destruction of the environment, but another, more important thing, is that those paper cups are not thermoses. And they are definitely not mine. I wouldn’t even know where to buy them!
Millions of writers have written that “[my] thermos is [redacted],” something that I do not agree with. Others, who may or may not be writers but to me are just people on the street, use their own thermos, which I don’t “get.” Why not just use mine? My thermos has a sticker on it. It’s for my friend’s band. It’s to cover up the logo that came on my thermos, which was free swag I got from a TV show I refuse to watch. The logo beneath the sticker is actually the only thing that I do not love about my thermos, but — and this is sickening — the ones who hate my thermos love it.
My thermos works for cold liquid, too, but f**k iced coffee right now unless I am feeling very bad and need it for enigmatic emotional reasons! My thermos is for hot things ONLY until early May. Just another thing that journalists of the mainstream media (and also independent online opinion newspapers) detest about my thermos. Bad news to those folks: it’s here to stay.