Coffee, tea and me

I remember when I was at primary school, several of my friends already drank tea but I wasn't really offered tea by my parents, so I always thought I would just grow into drinking it. The first time I had a cup of coffee was when I was 17 and I figured maybe I was just on the cusp of beginning to like things like that. When I went to work in my gap year I decided to take the plunge and drink tea with a vengeance and drank about 8 cups a day at my desk. I'm not entirely sure why as I still thought that tea tasted like dirty hot water, albeit still infinitely preferable to coffee, but I liked having an excuse to get up from my desk as I frequently nearly dozed off whilst working and everyone else worked really hard while I mostly did filing and telling people on the phone to try unplugging their computer and plugging it in again, so I was glad to have something to contribute to the team.

But now I'm nearly 30 and an reaching the conclusion that I am not going to grow in to liking tea or coffee, and something about that makes me feel as though I'm not a proper grown up. If I need help to cope with a hangover, I have to rely on Lucozade (infuriatingly unavailable in the US) and there's nothing to perk me up if I start the day a little sluggishly. Admittedly, when I try to talk to the Boy Wonder before he's had his coffee and he is incapable of forming a coherent sentence, I do feel a little pleased that I am not a reliant on caffeine as he is to live a normal life, but I still can't shake the feeling that I've bypassed a milestone of adulthood somehow.