Coffee Trekking, the War in Iraq, and the Availability of Dessert
Headed two towns south to get coffee yesterday, the conversation between my wife Katie and I turned to the very different ways in which our generation and our parents' (and our parents' parents') seem to think about what she termed "treats." We'd been making plans with her side of the family for Father's Day, and one option on the table was going to a local cafe and creamery for dessert on Saturday evening. Our parents frequently suggest this activity when we're making special plans, and while I'm all for ice cream on a Saturday night (or a Saturday afternoon—or, let's be honest, any time on any day, which speaks to the point I'm about to make), "getting dessert" doesn't seem to be quite as—special is the accurate word—an idea to us as it does to them. Seeing them, spending time with them—these things we desire. So why not do it while eating dessert? Why do we have almost no interest in this as a facilitating activity?
As we drove, Katie mused that we think very differently about such treats—like ice cream, for example, or cookies, or gourmet coffee drinks—than our parents do, and that this difference of perspective is the result of having grown up where and when we did: in America, the land of plenty, at the turn of the millennium. While neither of us grew up in particularly wealthy households, we did grow up in a culture of plenty, where a soft-serve ice cream cone was a short bike ride away, and, if you caught it on the right day, only cost $0.49. We grew up in a culture that spawned the Big Gulp, the Kitchen Sink, a culture whose restaurants provide cinnamon rolls—not mini ones, mind you, but regular- (which means gigantic-) sized cinnamon rolls—with every meal, even when you order the Gator Burger (how those two items compliment one another will forever elude me). Contrast this with conditions during World War II, when everything from sugar to chocolate to gasoline was rationed, and one may begin to understand why my grandparents' generation—whose influence on my parents' generation was obviously more direct—would consider so special something like dessert, which my generation takes for granted and, therefore, may not consider special enough to serve as a getting-together activity.
I mean, consider the trip on which this conversation took place. I am by no means a free spender—one look at my wardrobe (mostly thrift store t-shirts and jeans whose holes were not provided by the manufacturer), and one may justifiably suggest I am actually quite cheap. But Katie and I frequently drive fifteen to twenty minutes from our home to a particular coffee shop for drinks, despite the fact that there are other shops closer by. And why shouldn't we? Gasoline, regardless of how terrible it may seem when contrasted with what we paid just ten years ago, is relatively cheap, considering the process involved in its production and distribution. And I like this coffee better, and it isn't cost-prohibitive, so why not. But do I actually take less pleasure in it because it is so readily available, because it can be obtained almost without effort? Would I be better off if I couldn't—not if I chose not to, but if I hadn't the means, or if for some reason it wasn't available—have it as frequently? In what ways would it change the experience itself?
I was a sophomore at Millikin University when coalition forces invaded Iraq in 2003, and, living the sort of suspended, isolated intellectual existence college both advantageously and unfortunately necessitates, I was by my enrollment artificially insulated from the war itself. But so was everyone—not just college students, but the general public as a whole. Unless directly affected by a family member's deployment (as were some of my friends on campus), we were all of us free to take whatever stance we wanted on the war, because it didn't actually touch us in any tangible way. We could protest it, or fly American flags, or degrade the French for not joining us, and all these options were available because we were free to let it continue as long as it needed to without our ever being personally inconvenienced. We continued to live our life of plenty, and I continued to get soft-serve ice cream (chocolate and vanilla swirl, of course) from the student center cafeteria every day, topping it with Count Chocula for good measure. How absurd. But why not? No one was shipping it to the troops, or to kids starving in a foreign land for that matter, and if I didn't eat it, another student would.
When the United States finally withdrew from Iraq, the Earth did not shake, we did not hold parades, and media coverage was limited to articles describing the progress of large, slow-moving trucks through wire fences and commentary from Iraqis themselves wondering why no one in their country was making a big deal of it either. Here at home, we did not celebrate, because it was not real. The war was, for us, entirely theoretical, because it never touched our gas tanks or our cupboards.
Would anything have been different—better, worse—if it had?
I mean, consider the trip on which this conversation took place. I am by no means a free spender—one look at my wardrobe (mostly thrift store t-shirts and jeans whose holes were not provided by the manufacturer), and one may justifiably suggest I am actually quite cheap. But Katie and I frequently drive fifteen to twenty minutes from our home to a particular coffee shop for drinks, despite the fact that there are other shops closer by. And why shouldn't we? Gasoline, regardless of how terrible it may seem when contrasted with what we paid just ten years ago, is relatively cheap, considering the process involved in its production and distribution. And I like this coffee better, and it isn't cost-prohibitive, so why not. But do I actually take less pleasure in it because it is so readily available, because it can be obtained almost without effort? Would I be better off if I couldn't—not if I chose not to, but if I hadn't the means, or if for some reason it wasn't available—have it as frequently? In what ways would it change the experience itself?
I was a sophomore at Millikin University when coalition forces invaded Iraq in 2003, and, living the sort of suspended, isolated intellectual existence college both advantageously and unfortunately necessitates, I was by my enrollment artificially insulated from the war itself. But so was everyone—not just college students, but the general public as a whole. Unless directly affected by a family member's deployment (as were some of my friends on campus), we were all of us free to take whatever stance we wanted on the war, because it didn't actually touch us in any tangible way. We could protest it, or fly American flags, or degrade the French for not joining us, and all these options were available because we were free to let it continue as long as it needed to without our ever being personally inconvenienced. We continued to live our life of plenty, and I continued to get soft-serve ice cream (chocolate and vanilla swirl, of course) from the student center cafeteria every day, topping it with Count Chocula for good measure. How absurd. But why not? No one was shipping it to the troops, or to kids starving in a foreign land for that matter, and if I didn't eat it, another student would.
When the United States finally withdrew from Iraq, the Earth did not shake, we did not hold parades, and media coverage was limited to articles describing the progress of large, slow-moving trucks through wire fences and commentary from Iraqis themselves wondering why no one in their country was making a big deal of it either. Here at home, we did not celebrate, because it was not real. The war was, for us, entirely theoretical, because it never touched our gas tanks or our cupboards.
Would anything have been different—better, worse—if it had?
posted by David Alan Smith @ 1:07 AM
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