Is that coffee too light or just right?

Having been married for just a few months, D and I are still getting to know each other’s finer quirks and oddities. And I never would have predicted the subject of a recent argument. Last week, my husband and I argued about who makes the best coffee.

One thing you should know is that D and I love our coffee. Every morning we wake up and turn on the machine we appear to worship and wait for the drink made from the bean – which I’m certain God created just for me – to brew. The only problem is that he likes his coffee super strong, and I don’t.

Thursday night, I set the coffeemaker to come to life at 7:45 a.m. Now, I don’t usually get out of bed that early, but I had a lot to do to prepare for the weekend. My plan was simple. The smell of delicious coffee would draw me out of bed, so I could eat breakfast and go to the gym with D and get through my to-do list before work. I put the perfect amount of coffee in the filter with the perfect amount of water, set the timer — or so I thought — and got ready for bed.

Admittedly, I don’t often use the automatic setting on the coffeemaker because I don’t trust it, but Friday morning when I heard that machine a-gurglin’ and smelled that coffee a-brewin’ I was glad I went through all the trouble.

I pulled my sleepy body out of bed and greeted D, who’d just gotten home from work and went to the kitchen to fix my blissfully perfect cup of coffee.

But something was wrong. This was not the perfect cup of coffee I was looking forward to. This looked like motor oil.

“Geez, what the heck happened? This coffee is so dark,” I grumble, trying to figure out what I did wrong, preparing to pour a cup down the drain – blasphemous, I know.

“What do you mean it’s too dark,” D says, “I think it’s good.”

I look at him like I think he’s crazy and say, “Are you crazy?”

“No. It’s good,” he says.

He has tampered with my brew. “What did you do?” I ask.

“I saw what you had in there and didn’t know if you had mixed up something special, so I took out that filter and made my own,” he says.

WHAT? Of course it was something special. It was supposed to be perfect, the perfect pot of coffee to kick off my day and he messed with it. Oh no he didn’.

And it was on.

“Why would you do that?” I snap. (Hey, I know it’s stupid, but it’s like getting diet coke when you order regular at a drive through; it’s enough to make you cranky.)

“The automatic light wasn’t on,” he says. Grr. I knew I couldn’t trust that thing.

And he continued to explain that he didn’t think I had enough coffee in the filter to satisfy his taste buds. What? That pot of coffee would have been great. There was a hole in his logic; he just couldn’t see it. I have mad coffee-brewing skills, he just needed to be reminded.

But my declaration of skill set off an argument about which of us brews the best coffee. And, I hate to admit it, but it was just as silly and childish as it sounds. After a few quick quips, D recommended that we just get two coffeemakers to fix the problem. Then told me he’d be happy to show me how to set the timer, in that I’m-smarter-than-you kind of way. This battle is not over, but who’d have thought coffee could cause such discourse?

C.