Why I Live at the Tim Hortons

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Dear Readers,

  Today's post is titled as it is out of a nod to Eudora Welty's famous story "Why I Live at the P.O.," but it is of a very different nature.  I hated the story, but the title stuck with me.

  Sometimes, there are time stream variations that you would never notice.  Ones that live just beneath the surface, in the dark caves of your contemporaries' personal lives and there is little you can do to figure out quite which possibility you live in.

  One such possibility is treated in today's post.  Specifically, as regards Canadians and their odd obsession with Tim Hortons.  You know TH as a coffee shop with curiously delicious maple donuts.  It is a cornerstone of the Canadian economy.  However, in some time streams, TH is a much more bizarre prospect, as you'll come to learn in today's story.  Don't worry; it's not actually an episode from your time stream.  I'm pretty sure, at least.

Always,

Dr. John Skylar
Chairman
Department of Anachronism
University of Constantinople

I stood in the cold with bated, visible breath.

Before me lay the last threshold, the final step on my journey to becoming a true Canadian.  I could feel the too-expensive passport that burned its way through my pocket, and could imagine that the strange bulkiness of my wallet came from my citizenship card.  None of that really mattered.  What mattered lay in front of me.  The Tim Hortons.  No apostrophe.

Ten years ago, now, I suppose, I stood in front of the door of that coffee shop, the name of a famous hockey player flickering over my head.  I still remember it with vivid trepidation.  I twisted my wedding band on my finger, the real manacle that bound me to this patch of socialist permafrost.

I lifted my bemittened hand to the door, but even through the fleece I could still feel its magnetism.  Tim Hortons wanted me.  It would take me.  And there would be no going back.

Right now I'm sipping their coffee, as I have every day since.  Some say they put nicotine into it.  At least, that's what we tell the people in the States.  It's worse.

That day, though, I knew little of the place.  Just that my wife said I had to go, or I wasn't a real citizen.  I remember that clearly, too:

"Honey, there's one last thing before you're really in," she said to me in bed the night after I got my citizenship card.  Her face glowed a little while she said it.  At the time I thought it was about me.  Now I wonder.

I laughed, "Oh?  And what's that?"

The smile on her face before disappeared as she spoke, and her voice entered a hush, "You have to go to Tim Hortons."

It confused me that she seemed so serious.  She'd teased me before about my Starbucks-going ways.  Now it seemed like a bigger thing.  "You're not kidding, are you?"

"Nope.  You want to be a Canadian, you've got to go there.  Get a donut and a coffee.  And drink deep.  Do it tomorrow."

That exchange creeped me out enough that I went straight to sleep that night.

This precipitated the next day's anxious staring contest with the cafe door that I described earlier.  I pulled, and the door came free with less effort than I expected.

I stepped through and made a beeline for an awkward-looking teenage girl in the uniform I would soon come to associate with my dark addiction.  Her dyed hair and little spots of acne fit with the awkward way that she said, "Hi! Er, hello.  Would you...what would you like?"

I ordered what my wife suggested.  I decided on a maple donut.

"Will that be all sir?"

I nodded and paid.

Once I found a table, I raised the paper cup to my lips and blew a little through the tiny opening in the lid.  I could feel the heat inside thaw my breath.

Then I took a sip.  As it burned my tongue, I knew why my wife demanded I visit.  The taste, of course, was fantastic, but nothing compared to the sudden awareness that it gave me.

The caffeine, and something else, something I now know to be Canada's darkest secret, opened my mind.  I knew I would not be able to go one more day without this substance.  I could see it all.  From the frozen top of the world, I saw the machinations of the US and the blithering insanities of Europe.  With my elbows on a shiny formica perch and the caffeine coursing through my blood, I saw those things canceled out by the fanaticism of the developed world's enemies and I was filled with a profound sense that so long as I kept sitting there, kept sipping the coffee, everything would be all right, despite it all.  It gave me something like awareness, but something more powerful: perspective.

I can't tell you what the active ingredient really is.  It's not caffeine.  It's not nicotine or newspaper.  It comes from a rare fish, and it's very concentrated in seals.  They're a national treasure.  It can also come from people, but they have to give it up freely.  It's a part of the spirit, and watch out if you spend too much time with a Canuck, because they can drain you of it before you even notice. 

A Canadian who goes through withdrawal turns into the most surly of evil bitches in just a matter of days.  Without the THC (Tim Hortons Coffee), we go crazy.  And now I'm one of them.  With it, I can see right into anyone's soul and make them do what I want.  And better than any voudoun, that seeing leaves me with a profound sense of comfort.

Time for my daily fix.  I'm watching you, USA.