Coffee and I go way back. I remember fondly the days of italian sodas and cremosas and other naive beverages from the cottage. I would step up to the cashier in wide-eyed sincerity and order a lemon italion soda, or a limi or kiwi if I was feeling particularly spicy, because that was the closest it got to 7up when you lived a soda pop-deprived childhood. On those sweltering 75 degree days of summer, I enjoyed $1 granitas, which consist of fruit juice with added sugar and blended ice, while curiously eyeing my brother's less innocent coffee beverage. That was forbidden for those under ten- the caffine would keep us up til God knows what hour.

I guess my mother and father knew it was bound to happen eventually, but that didn't stop the experience from being excruciatingly painful the first time I asked for my juice glass to be filled with coffee. I crept into the kitchen and grabbed one of the macho 12 oz juice glasses, knowing all the while that when my mother had reluctantly said yes, that it would be okay for me to fill a glass, she had been referring to the tamer 80z variety. Five sips in and the rest was history- I was lost to coffee, the vicious cycle starting right then and there in my own kitchen in my own house, in my own eight year old innocence. The only hope for me would have been to be slowly weened off with church coffee, which isn't really coffee but more like a strong tea. But I'd heard talk of church coffee and steered clear of it- the first sign of coffee snobbery.

Now coffee is a habit, a hobby if you will. I reckon our family gives the cottage more business then the rest of our town put together. I've moved on from drip coffee with cream and sugar, and now experiment with soy and interesting flavors and the dreaded extra shot. I spend twice as much allowance on coffee as I do clothes in a month, and my brother recently counted nearly two hundred dolllars out in change from the year's coffee spendings. Is this right? Are there better things for us to spend our earnings on? Ponder this, and in the meantime, answer this question for a while:

What is the most money you've ever spent on a single beverage and what was it?