Unbalanced

It finally happened.

I have a habit — irritating to everyone in the house but me — of sitting in my chair in the morning doing computer work while balancing my coffee cup on my knee. And when I say balancing, I don’t mean casually resting it there. I mean skillfully. I’ve been doing this for years and have never once come even close to spilling a drop. Not to brag, but I started juggling when I was ten. I possess uncanny abilities of balance and coordination normally unseen in tall, non-athletic men like myself.

Or rather, I possessed them. Once you enter your sixties, the body begins working against you the way Starbucks employees secretly try to unionize. You find yourself drifting into walls, ricocheting off doorframes, or hitting that one mysterious patch of shower tile that feels like black ice in Gatlinburg. It doesn’t matter that you’ve never once lost your balance in the shower. Your sixties are when you begin browsing online for the best deals on titanium handrails.

Still, I can juggle. And I can balance a full cup of hot coffee on my knee. Cream, black, whatever. I don’t want to diminish my skill, but it helps that I drink from one of those classic porcelain diner mugs. The kind you see in old movies where a guy walks in, orders “a cup of joe,” flicks a nickel onto the counter, and barely finishes half of it before storming out to confront the mob. Or sometimes he drains it in one dramatic swallow, adjusts his fedora, and tucks an envelope of cash into a folded newspaper.

But you never see him balance the mug on his knee, which, let’s be honest, is more impressive than carrying mob money.

My mug has a Waffle House logo on it, which I feel adds a level of danger. Waffle House staff is not known to encourage customers balancing tableware on any part of their anatomy. A shame, really, because this mug is built for it. It has a slightly concave bottom that practically hugs my kneecap. Not that I need the help; I’ve balanced all shapes and sizes of mugs and cups on this knee. But something about the Waffle House mug feels like it’s giving my little circus act its official endorsement.

My wife, unfortunately, is not as generous with her support.

To her, me balancing a mug on my knee is the domestic equivalent of people who stop dead in the middle of I-285 in Atlanta to rescue a turtle. Only without the turtle. She believes dishes should never, under any circumstances, be placed on anything that is not a table. I sometimes wonder if she once worked at Waffle House.

I don’t balance my mug to prove anything. It’s not some subconscious declaration of youthfulness or stability. If anything, it’s the opposite. My knees are about as steady and reliable as Charlie Sheen. Honestly, it’s just about convenience. Yes, there’s a coffee table a foot and a half in front of me. But when it’s not buried under books, art supplies, remotes, and scattered pairs of multi-strength reading glasses, placing my mug there would force me to lean forward every time I want a sip. This is not acceptable.

A mug on my knee requires nothing but a simple hand movement. It’s elegant. Efficient. A small act of morning rebellion. The only thing more convenient would be balancing it on my beard. An idea I’m working to perfect as I write this.

The dark day came a couple nights ago when, unbelievably, my mug slipped off my knee. I still haven’t determined what went wrong. Perhaps I had on slippery pants. Maybe there was a strong eastern breeze in the living room. No matter. It happened. My formerly reliable Waffle House mug slid down my knee and tumbled toward the floor.

I’d like to point out here, as I pointed out several times to my wife, I caught the mug before it hit the ground. Technically, this was more a warning than an accident. Yes, some coffee sloshed onto the carpet and onto a stack of sketchbooks, but the fact that I snatched the mug mid-fall proves I’m still capable of grabbing fast-moving objects just as I did when I was ten and juggling rubber balls. Everyone is allowed one little slip-up in their daredevil career, right? Even my dad, when he held onto that New Year’s Eve firework longer than he should have, still got to keep all his fingers.

To her credit, my wife didn’t say a single negative word about the incident. I didn’t even detect an eye roll. She simply placed a sheet of industrial plastic on the carpet around my chair and added another tick mark to the assisted living brochure that mysteriously arrived in the mail one day. Whatever that means.

You might think the almost-spill would deter me from coffee balancing, but it’s only done the opposite. After every airplane crash, officials loudly reassure the public that air travel is still the safest way to travel. I do the same with coffee-knee balancing. My years of success speak much louder than one minor blunder.

In fact, I’ve even branded my technique. I call it the Coffee Kneeble. A coffee table on the knee. Let’s make plans now to get together next year and discuss my new invention: the Balancing Brew ’n’ Beard.

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