I love them a little less in this post. The salient difference is that I love LOOKING at gross things. I prefer to keep it confined to sight.
What’s the grossest thing you can imagine finding in your coffee? Don’t tell me a spider, because that’s at least edible, and don’t tell me hair – that’s not even particularly unsanitary. Spare me an answer of “curdled milk” because while that’s gross, it’s something that was…at least edible at one time. And is still edible, it’s just farther along on the spectrum of edibility. And if you are grossed out by finding coffee grounds or grinds in your coffee, I don’t know how to address you.
The grossest thing you can find in your coffee is something that is not only disgusting but also unidentifiable. If you read I Love Gross Things, Part 1 you know that I tend to take pictures of all things gross as I encounter them, so this is your warning to stop scrolling if you don’t want to see for yourself what was in my coffee (and perhaps help me identify it):
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This was after I glimpsed something at the bottom of the cup – AFTER DRINKING 2/3 OF THE COFFEE THAT WAS SWIMMING AROUND THIS – and used a pen to investigate further. Then I sent this image to my parents with lots of profanity and asked if they could 1) sympathize and 2) guess at what this could be.
(My dad has not yet responded and my mom said “yuck” so many times it started autocorrecting into gibberish.)
WHAT IS THAT
WHY WAS IT IN MY COFFEE
Okay, it’s clearly not either of the two things most likely to be found at the bottom of your coffee (sugar sludge or grounds), and it’s not milk-related. Did someone pour my coffee over a discarded muffin half, now partially dissolved back into its batter state? Is this a rogue brown napkin or a coffee filter? And WHO CAN I SHOW THIS TO?
For someone with obsessive compulsive disorder and a long history of disease-related fears, I have a surprisingly robust tolerance for food-adjacent incidents of disgust. Usually I’ll shrug off an unexplained fleck, or a hair, or a weird film on the surface of something. But there are limits!
After sending this to my parents I took my coffee cup and whatever its inhabitant was and went back to the bagel place from whence it had come – the bagel place I’ve been patronizing for almost ten years, which is why I felt comfortable walking in and showing both the picture and the coffee to every single guy behind the counter (they did not have customers at the time; I’m not trying to harm their business, just to identify a new species of sludge creature/assess my risk of mutating into a new creature myself).
They were perplexed. One said, “I made it, you know I would never do something to you!” which, YES, I do know that; I’m not worried about malice, just contamination.
So we couldn’t figure it out.
And…they gave me another coffee.
I drank it. Was that not the right move? I made sure to go home and pour the coffee very slowly into a mug first, to make sure nothing was lurking in its depths. But now I don’t know if I can go back there. I might have to find a new bagel place.
Does anyone know what on earth the monstrosity from my original cup was?? Please, I am begging you. I have to have a conclusion here.
