I have more coffee memories than I can count. Coffee has been a constant companion. I can pass a coffeeshop I'd been to and remember being there, and where I sat if I stayed. If I could re-live a single semester from college, it would be the semester with Hiromi, when Amina was away in Dublin, but the only thing I remember about Hiromi is coffee. Does Gevalia ring a bell?

But if I had one coffee memory to relate, it was the time I was in "The Rise and Fall of Early Christianity" class, the one with the dynamic professor who loved to use German terms with his native Texan accent (nary a class went by without him mentioning the "jesusbewegung"). The class was in a large room in an old building, with wooden floors and the rows of seats tiered, I was a little more than halfway up on the aisle, and I had my coffee in my ever-present Oberlin Earthday mug.

And then *scheiss!!* I knock my coffee mug off the desk and it hits the floor and bursts open and coffee is everywhere. The professor continues with his lecture while I freeze wondering what to do *you can't just leave it, it's a mess, you have to clean it up*. I got up, walked down the aisle and left the lecture hall, and bingo, right there was the janitor's closet. I grabbed a mop, marched back into the room, the professor barely gives me a glance as he continues talking, I walked up the aisle, mopped up the coffee amidst a growing din of giggling, and finally, as I was walking back out to return the mop, the professor paused as the class gave me a round of applause.