How coffee helped me turn into a Real girl

I started drinking coffee when I was 11.

Along with my two bestest buddies, we'd get together on a regular basis at one or the other of our houses and brew a pot to share throughout the evening. There was always mounds of sugar and truckloads of creamer(powdered at the time-it was the 'in' thing) or milk injected into our cups, and at least a few times we experimented with melted chocolate, caramels, and once, candy corn. That one didn't go well at all, we almost exploded the microwave trying to melt the niblets down and those suckers basically turn into plastic when radiated heated.

The point of these meetings however, was not really the coffee, although it helped some, but to register the fact that we were growing into young women. The coffee was just a fancy sophisticated drink that let us feel ourselves as fancy and sophisticated, we often dressed up( although we weren't going anywhere)to show that we had grown-up tastes that didn't revolve around caffeine levels, and when the parents got sick of our shouting and experimental swearing and we got kicked out of our respective houses and had to find another place to hang out, we found a little Greek hole in the wall and took such pride in ordering our coffees 'black' and sitting in the smoking section like we were responsible and mature young adults.

It makes me laugh still, because that restaurant was forever getting fined from the police for letting minors in the smoking section without adults, and so we constantly had to keep an eye out for cops so we could make a break for it if we had to. It was a bit of a rush to be doing something illegal without actually committing the illegal act, since none of us had started smoking (actually smoking, not just carrying a pack and some matches around, only at school and pretending to inhale so you'd look like The Shit) until a few years after. But we were growing up. We were gossiping, and sharing stories and remember when?'s, although our remembrances were pretty tame at that time, after all, we were only 11/12.

We all met our respective first 'real' boyfriends in that place, broke up with them, cried and bitched over family issues, big or small, learned how to flirt with the waiters (who were much too old and probably thought us crazy when we finally got ballsy enough to slap their arses on the way by) and generally learned how to interact in a close friendship setting. I treasured those years, before bitches and backstabbers, before the hell years of high school and the horror of having to keep a budget, etc.

I'm friends with those girls still, although our coffee dates don't happen as often as we'd like. In fact just the other day, one of those girls and I had a coffee date while picking up our respective random crap in Walmart because, god dammit, that was the only time we had to spare. And that's okay, because it was one of the most enjoyable shopping experiences I've had with my kids in tow.

And it's all to the gratitude of a simple cup of coffee.