Flies In My Coffee

The other day I was joyfully sipping my coffee from Latte Mi Corazon (R.I.P.). I got busy and distracted, as a 2nd grade teacher is want to do. When I came back several hours later and picked up my thoughtlessly abandoned cup there was a small gnat that flew out of hole in the lid. I was horrified!

Suddenly, I had a flashback montage that involved every cup of coffee I had drank carelessly in the last few weeks! Days of picking up cups while teaching addition, yelling at small children, cursing thunderstorms, and checking homework (teachers are masters of multi-tasking). I imagined the tiny corpses of flies that were lured into a vanilla latte by the sweet nectar of sugar and caffine that I had inadvertently consumed! I had gone from happily getting my caffeine on to contemplating how many diseases I had ingested, because flies after all are poop eaters! I basically had convinced myself that I could stop eating meat and legumes because I had eaten so much protein in fly-sized bits and pieces! I was horrified! Disgusted! Outraged!

Then I had a moment of clarity! I realized there were two paths that diverged in the woods; one in which I would give up coffee entirely (ha) more probable I would spend hours carefully checking under each lid and on the foamy latte surface before every sip OR I could ignore the one stray fly and embrace that flies rarely fly into coffee and that was probably the first time it had ever happened in the history of mankind. Ignorance is bliss...oh, I think so.

As I was driving home, I realized that this coffee/fly fiasco was really a just a confirmation of things I already knew to be true...the fear of the not-yets, not-quites, not-at-alls has a lot of people paralyzed into not doing or trying things that could be amazing. Do I think that drinking flies is the amazing experience that people are missing...No. However, why should I let something that may or may-not ever happen dictate my daily actions.

So my friends, here is to living! I am going to try something new. I am going to order something that I haven't tried before...even though I know what I like and the fear of not liking something as much as what I always order has plagued my ordering choices for years. I am going to drink from water fountains. I am going take all the sloppy 2nd grade hugs that are given to me even when I can see their crusty, booger noses and dirty, somewhat sticky hands. I am going to abide by the 5 second rule. I am going to use pencils from the kids' desks and not even look at who sits at that table. Don't get me wrong, I still am going to wash vigorously and use clorox wipes at every possible opportunity, but I am also going walk barefoot in the grass sometimes. I will wipe off hot dogs that have fallen onto the ground before I cook them, but enjoy the crunchy bits that are reminiscent of where they landed on the patio. I will sometimes do something that scares me just to make sure I haven't slipped into a wasteland of stagnant living. And I am definitely going to drink my coffee without looking for flies!