A Good Mug Is Hard To Find

A dark secret lies inside our kitchen cupboard. Whenever an unknowing guest opens these doors they pause, a look of panicked astonishment washing over them. They’ve discovered our secret weapons cache, our shameful tribute to classic American excess. We are coffee mug addicts.

We’ve collected dozens of ceramic and travel mugs and we show no signs of halting our gluttonous collection. We want to stop accumulating them. But like any fiend whose willpower is broken time and again, a certain truth has revealed itself: We can’t stop the madness on our own.

You may ask, “How many coffee mugs do a reasonable man and woman need rattling around their household?” If I answered “upwards of 40” surely you’d urge me to seek professional counsel. You’d think we were providing java for a team of firefighters or an AA meeting. Alas, neither is true. Moreover, we actually cherish the promiscuous mug-hopping lifestyle that we’ve cultivated for ourselves. Like an aimless tramp going to bed in the arms of a different man each night, we seek out the thrill of taking our coffee in a different vessel each morning. We have no loyalties, no genuine attachments and couldn’t be further from mug monogamy. We use whatever mug we fancy in the moment, whatever mug makes us feel loved and wanted. After each short-term dalliance, we cast the cup aside thinking of nothing but our next conquest.

Desperate people lacking self-esteem and self-worth sometimes cling to their more successful peers. They seek identity through the achievements of others. I think this charade is at work when I pull my official United States Senate mug from the rack and fill it with a half-liter of coffee. I may have no hope of representing our country in the halls of Congress, but the way I parade around my house in the early morning hours with this ornate faux-marble mug, you’d think I just personally brought about a historic piece of legislation. Hey, I’m a patriot.

And what of the titanium REI travel mug that could keep coffee warm for eight hours on the surface of a glacier? I have yet to clip its handle to my belt as I march around the office, but in my twisted mind the mug provides me the aura of a hardened outdoorsman who has seen it all. Will a co-worker really want to mess with someone who supposedly has foraged through deep wilderness and lived off the land for days at a time?

We didn’t plan on everything getting this out of control. It was innocent in the beginning. A few mugs from our alma mater. A mug or two from a charity road race. A special Christmas mug from Santa festooned with his own likeness. And before we knew it, we were sitting on top of a coffee container harem.

The sad truth of it all is that these mugs don’t love us back. Indeed, nearly all the travel mugs leak excessively. Some of them start leaking almost instantly upon arrival; I have the stained clothes to prove it. A Starbucks mug that we obtained with a gift card in a fit of glee even went so far as to say on its packaging that it “is not guaranteed against leaking or discharge.” Isn’t that a little like a piece of luggage not guaranteed to, you know, keep your clothes from getting scattered across the airport?

One would hope the whole purpose of any mug was to protect the bearer from hot, sticky fluid from cascading all over their person. But that’s not the type of world we live in.

Coffee is an important part of American life. I won’t go into the oft-repeated sentiment that Starbucks has infested every nook and cranny of the modern world, but you can’t deny that our caffeinated, roast-bean society is here to stay. And as coffee culture pushes ahead, and seemingly everybody else finds a ceramic vessel to pour their hopes and dreams into, I can’t help but feel that I’m never going to find the mug of my life.