Day 361: Regarding Humphrey

Yesterday, standing outside Village Coffee, Lindsay reached for my double espresso, took a sip, stared at me, took another sip, stared, smiled, sipped again, and said, “Sorry, I’m totally kibashing [sic] your coffee.”

So many things wrong here, and so little time to explore them.

The first problem was how she said the word “kibosh,” pronouncing the second syllable with a long “a” as in “hash,” instead of with a short “o” as in “mosh.” An understandable and endearing slip-up from a woman who rarely sleeps and almost never says kibosh. I looked at her incredulously, and despite having a mouth full of coffee, she opened her jaws pelican-style to release a laugh that nearly choked her. We are equally in love with her gaffes.

As she suspected, kibosh was completely the wrong word. If she’d been determined to use it, perhaps saying, “Wow, sorry I’m totally putting the kibosh on your ability to drink your coffee,” would have been the way to go. Instead she said, “I’m kibashing [sic] your coffee.” Not only did she use the wrong word, but she used the wrong word in the wrong way – the baseball equivalent of swinging and missing twice at the same pitch.

What I believe she meant to say was “Sorry, I’m totally bogarting your coffee.” While, grammatically correct (maybe not?), I firmly believe bogart should only be used when referring to a dramatically long inhalation of smoke. People can bogart a cigarette, a joint, or even a crack pipe, but never in a black and white movie did Humphrey Bogart ever take an obnoxiously long sip of coffee to intimidate a foe. So, while there’s an argument to be made that the term bogarting has evolved to describe any non-sharer, such use should be avoided. No one should have to hear the phrase, ”Dude, don’t bogart the tofurkey.”

So, what do you say when someone hogs another’s coffee? Who is the Humphrey Bogart of coffee drinkers? Who holds down the the dramatic lead in coffee drinking? I’m going to take a risk and suggest that it’s not one particular person, but rather, a type of person; the type of person who subscribes to a newspaper, but not just any newspaper: The New York Times.

When I think of people taking annoyingly long and loud sips from a politically correct mug of coffee that they’ve ground themselves and brewed in a machine they insist on buying for all their friends, I think of them reading the New York Times. And now so do you.

Lindsay, the next time you hold onto my coffee and take a few too many sips before returning it, I suggest you say, “Sorry, I’m totally pulling a 7 day home delivery on your coffee.” Sure, it’s a little long and rolls off the tongue like burlap, but at least it’s specific, and helps squash the possibility of Humphrey Bogart’s memory ever being associated with vegans.