dunked

Back from yet another Battle Assembly - that's what they call drill weekends now: Battle Assembly. Or BA. Pronounced "Bah" - at least, that's how I say it. So, playing Army is done for January. Yay.

But that's not why I called you all here today.

Every morning, on my way to the Reserve Center, I grabbed a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee. I would grab a cup in the afternoon as well, on the way home. Because Dunkin Dounts had what I used to think was the best coffee on earth.

I looooove coffee. In fact, right now - as I type these very words - I am drinking freshly-brewed coffee from a giant Superman mug. It's enormous, three cups worth. If you ever visit my folks, there are always endless pots of coffee brewing in the kitchen. It's heavenly. In college, I worked at a coffee shop - first on campus and then in its main Newton shop. I was, what is pretentiously referred to as, a barista. I can appreciate a fresh cup of exceptionally rich and flavorful Guatemalan Huehuetenango or the mild body of a Dominican coffee...but there was just something special about a cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee. Maybe it's the simple elegance or its working class roots. Maybe they put crack in it. I don't know. All I know is, if I see a Dunkin Donuts and I don't have a cup of coffee in my hand...

Anyway, this past weekend, I stopped at no less than 5 different Dunkin Donuts chains and helped myself to a heapin' brew of their famous coffee. Usually, a medium Hazelnut with cream and sugar. And I have a message for the fine folks who make the important decisions: please make the coffee like you used to make it!!!

5 different cups o' joe and 5 different reactions. Two cups were old and stale-tasting, downright burnt and excessively bitter - what I expect Joan Crawford must have tasted like in her later years.

One cup carried an overwhelmingly chemical taste - I assume it came from whatever they were masquerading as their "hazelnut flavor shot." I think it was Windex.

One cup was far too bland, tasting nothing like the rich, smooth coffee I have come to expect from the Double D.

One cup, thankfully, was juuuust right and restored my faith in humanity.

A perfectly poured cup of fresh-brewed Dunkin Donuts coffee stokes the embers of hope that one day Dunkin Dounts coffee will retain its high quality in every chain, in every store across this great country of ours, bringing joy and caffeine to everybody, everywhere.

After pondering it some more, I realize what it is that makes a good Dunkin Donuts cup of joe. It's not simply the beans or the flavor shots or the minimum wage workers who may or may not spit in every third cup of coffee ... no. That special ingredient that makes Dunkin Donuts coffee so good is love. And when that love is missing, that coffee becomes just another scalding hot puddle of sludge in a styrofoam cup, burning the taste from your tongue and the joy from your soul. So step it up a bit, Dunkin Donuts coffee makers. Don't let the hard bean-picking work of those migrant workers go in vain! Make every cup of Dunkin Dounts' coffee the best damn cup of coffee in the world!


...because I have $1.86 left on my Dunkin Donuts gift card and I could really use a good cup of coffee right about now...