As we come into adulthood it becomes more difficult to make and maintain friendships. In an effort to increase communication between myself and a few friends who live across the country, we have started mailing each other hand written letters. I first got the idea when one of my best chums did a six month stint in Wisconsin on an organic farm for what I call an artistanship because I cannot remember the correct term for what she won. These are coveted spots where artists get to work on their crafts which is wonderful, however, she was on a farm in the middle of Wisconsin and cell phone reception was what you would expect. Thus we dusted off the old quills and inkwells and went to work! The joy one gets when they receive a piece of mail that is not a bill and or junk asking you to join AARP when you're in your 20s. (Whomever does their mailing lists should really consider entering another line of work) is exactly like I remember as a child. I enjoyed writing and receiving these letter so much and found it was a great way to keep in contact with someone who was not in your time zone I decided to add to my writing circle. I now have two different friends that I exchange letters with and I get overjoyed when I see one in my mailbox! Emails are never this exciting. It's great getting to laugh aloud while reading. My one friend, let's call her Katie because Katie is her name, when I first proposed this idea thought that I was bat shit insane but being Katie was up for this bizarre request. It did not take long before she agreed that this was a wonderful idea and even greater her husband is now jealous that she receives such fun mail! Success! I also feel like we are doing our patriotic duty by keeping the postal service in business.
On writing my latest letter to Katie, which I popped in the mail today -Katie this is your que that if you are reading this you must now stop until you read the letter!!!- that I remembered a funny story to write to her and thus started the idea for this blog post. I stopped by a friend's house and they asked me to try some this tea. I love tea but by the way he offered this tea I was mildly concerned: "Sabrina you must try this tea, if you do not like it I will give you a new tea of your choosing but first you must try this" I didn't really agree because it was clear there was little way out of this tea-dicament so I just accepted my fate- hoping that he loved it so much that he felt all should try. But something in his voice told me that was not going to be the case. As the mug was placed before me it was explained that it was a "savory" tea and that's when I looked to my other friend whom I remember warning me of this filth. I sniffed the aroma coming off of the curious tea and it smelled of celery. "I like celery" I thought "Perhaps it's just not something all gravitate towards". That's when I took a big mouth full of what tasted precisely like boiled dirt. At this I began questioning my choices in friends-these two are far too close to my own evilness. I am totally that person that when I taste something gross I tell everyone around me "taste this!". Case in point, when I came back from Australia I brought back Vegemite for my loved ones to try, I even brought it to the family reunion. That's what family is for after all, making someone suffer as you have. No? That's just mine? Moving on. I continued to drink the boiled dirt aka crushed up broccoli, cilantro, carrot, celery and a bunch of other earthy veggies that have no business being in tea. I was convinced that something that tasted like that had to be good for you right? About halfway through the tea they also said "Oh that tea also gives you terrible gas". Thank you friends for telling me this now. I decided at that point, healthy or not, I was not going to knock us all out with the contents of my butt. Shortly thereafter I said my adieu and wondered what I had done to wrong them so.
This brings me to another story of tea-rrible times. A former roommate of mine bought a box of tea from the Christmas tree shops. The box was completely written in Chinese so she didn't really know what she was getting but $1 for a box of tea is a pretty good deal especially for a broke graduate student tea addict. A few days later she began to get sick so she made herself some of this tea to help make her feel better. Everyone knows tea=miracle cure. The sicker she felt the more tea she drank. Well after a few days of her diarrhea getting increasingly worse she finally realized the only new element was this tea. Time for Google. Luckily her laptop could travel with her to the toilet where she had been living for the past 48 hours. And once she typed in the tea the word "laxative" appeared on the screen. This made her the first person to use tea as a weight loss system, albeit against her will.
My dear readers if you are still with me after what started out as a great way to communicate with friends and then literally ended up in the shitter I appreciate you. For those who abandoned this post they'll get theirs. They'll never know now to avoid heavily discounted tea. The deal is far too good to be true friends. These folks have now doomed their intestinal tracks because they would not read my tea-rrifc blog post. Just goes to show you can't save them all.
