A Post About Tea, So My Poor Mom Doesn’t Have To Read About Unusual Sex Practices Anymore

I’ve been drinking tea in the office and I’m afraid everyone is starting to think I am a pussy. Every time someone sees my pouring a cup of hot water in the kitchen they ask, “Not feeling well?” And while I guess I am feeling a little under the weather, it’s not like I’m standing there wrapped in a blanket with a thermometer in my mouth. So I usually say, “Yeah, I’ve got a bit of a cold,” to which they invariably say, only half-jokingly, “Well I’d better stay away from you!” to which I say completely seriously, “Yeah, you should!”

Anyway, the problem is that I’m enjoying drinking tea. So there is going to come a time when I am healthy again, and when I go into the kitchen in the morning and am surrounded by five corporate casually dressed zombies fighting over the coffee pot and I make myself a cup of tea, I’m not going to have an excuse anymore, and then I’ll be The Guy In The Office That Drinks Tea (Because He Thinks He’s Better Than Everyone Else).

So in trying to come up with a way to remain a “man of the people,” I thought of this: For the next few days, whenever I am asking for something in the office, instead of saying, “Can you hand me the tape?” I’ll extend my hand and say in a loudly obnoxious tone, “Tape me!” Or when I need the latest revision of a legal brief from a secretary, I’ll email her, “Margaret, brief me!” People always love a “that guy” around the office. “That guy” who clips his nails at his desk. “That guy” who wipes down his keyboard with an alcohol swab every morning. So I’ll be “that guy” who asks for things as though he were going through a mid-life crisis.

Then, when the time comes that I’m back to my old, healthy self and I go into the kitchen to make myself a cup of tea and all the zombies are giving me the look of a plebian crowd indignant to their bourgeoisie superior, I can hold out my cup of hot water to June the receptionist and say, “Tea bag me!”

Sike! Sex week continues!