The Mug Has a Lid Now
Make it sAt this point, I have to admit that Open Doors has a mug problem.tand out
Not a problem with mugs, exactly. The mugs are doing great. The problem is that I have now written enough about them that they have developed continuity.
There is lore.
The first installment, “Borrowed Mug, Borrowed Time”, began with the death of a black mug I had essentially stolen from a teacher’s desk in high school and then somehow kept for about fifteen years. It turned out to be unusually good for me because its shape made it harder to spill. I did not choose it for accessibility. Teenage me was not conducting ergonomic research. Teenage me was committing a very minor property crime.
Still, it worked.
Then Charlotte accidentally broke it while helping with the dishes, which gave the whole thing a surprisingly respectable ending for an object acquired through theft.
The sequel, “The Mug That Kept Coming Back”, documented the search for a successor. First came a festive mug from a Christmas party that was almost right. Then Christa found a black one with thin walls, a good handle, ridges along the body, and a lip that curved inward just enough to make spilling harder.
It was better.
This was irritating.
I had already spent fifteen years believing I possessed the One True Mug, only to discover that apparently mug technology had continued advancing while I was not paying attention.
And, Christa had found it.
We Have Entered the Lid Era
Now there is another one.
Christa gave it to me for Father’s Day, because apparently she has decided that every major gift-giving occasion should also function as a new round of the Kevin Mug Accessibility Trials.
This one has a lid.
A lid.
Do you understand what this does to the competitive landscape?
The original mug was good because its sides curved inward. The next one refined the concept. This one has apparently looked at the entire problem of spilling and said, what if we simply put something over the top?
Brilliant.
Revolutionary.
Thousands of years of ceramic civilization have brought us here.
It is VERY difficult to spill from this mug. Not impossible, presumably. I have a remarkable ability to discover edge cases. Somewhere there is probably a sequence of movements involving my wheelchair, one poorly timed reach, and an innocent household object that could defeat even this thing.
But, we are getting close.
And, once again, Christa somehow nailed it.
That is becoming the actual story here.
The first mug was an accident. I took something because I liked it, used it for years, and only much later understood why its shape worked so well for me.
The mugs after that have been different. They have arrived in a life where small design choices matter more. Weight matters. Handles matter. The lip matters. The likelihood that coffee or tea will remain inside the object specifically designed to contain coffee or tea matters.
Christa knows that.
More importantly, she seems to possess an increasingly supernatural ability to locate the next improvement.
At first she found the mug that was nearly perfect.
Now she has added a lid.
I am beginning to worry about where this trajectory leads.
The Extraterrestrial Phase
I already mentioned this mug in “The Backlog Is Dead, Long Live the Backlog”, where I admitted that mugs had somehow become part of the theological architecture of Open Doors.
I thought I was joking.
I may have been documenting an emerging religion.
Because what comes after this?
The first mug survived fifteen years.
The next mug was better designed for my hands.
The newest mug is extremely difficult to spill.
At the current rate of improvement, I assume the next one will be handed to Christa by aliens.
There will be no dramatic first contact. No enormous spacecraft hovering over Washington. No message to humanity.
A small silver object will descend quietly into our backyard.
A door will open.
A being composed of light will step forward holding a mug.
“We have crossed seventeen thousand light-years,” it will say, “because Kevin still occasionally gets coffee or tea on his shirt.”
Christa will examine the mug.
She will turn it over once.
“Yeah,” she’ll say. “He’ll like this.”
And, somehow, she’ll be right. Again.
At which point I will have no choice but to write the fourth mug essay.
Because apparently this is what Open Doors is now.
Disability. Consciousness. Literature. Family. Artificial intelligence. The nature of existence.
And, an increasingly elaborate sequence of drinking vessels.
I could pretend to be embarrassed by this.
I am not.
The mug has a lid now.
We are making progress.
They keep coming
Will she ever stop?
I hope not
