I drink hot coffee. Black. Every morning. Even in the summer.

I drink it for the caffeine fix, I suppose. I remember when Mr. Haynes, my fifth-grade science teacher at Midway Elementary, asked us to raise our hand if our parents drink coffee every morning. My hand went up. Both my parents sat at the breakfast table every morning, drinking coffee and reading the Lexington Herald.  

They’re addicted to a drug,” Mr. Haynes said.

Holy sugar substitute! I thought. My own parents … drug addicts. Mr. Haynes went on to explain that caffeine, while medically classified as a drug, is widely used and probably harmless.

Still, Mr. Haynes got my attention, and I paid close attention to the rest of his lesson on substances that change how the body or brain functions. I did not share any of that with my parents that night. I didn’t want them to feel like drug addicts.

And whether it was due to Mr. Haynes’s dramatic depiction of coffee or its less-than-welcoming taste, I didn’t drink coffee during my high school years. Neither did I drink coffee to power me through late-night study sessions in college, nor in my twenties to wake me up at work after a night out.

It was a boys trip to Las Vegas that put me onto coffee … that put coffee into me. Our trip preceded “The Hangover,” and our night was not nearly as insane, but it was debilitating enough to make me guzzle some coffee at the breakfast buffet. I was twenty-nine when I started drinking coffee, and I never stopped.

Hangover mornings are long past, but coffee remains. My day can go in a hundred different directions, but each one of them starts with coffee. Not every coffee morning is created equal, of course. A steaming mug of joe is one hundred percent perfect on a frigid wintry morning. But even when it’s far from cold—imagine a humid blanket of August air—a hot cup of coffee still hits me at about ninety-six percent perfect.

Picture this: It’s 2008ish, and I’m sitting with sleep-deprived adults in the rickety bleachers of a baseball field somewhere in Central Kentucky. The morning air is heavy, still laden, somehow, with the ball-field dust from last night’s games. The July day is forecast to hit a hundred degrees, and all of us parents have driven ninety minutes to deliver our young sons to the field by seven, an hour before the first game.

“These boys need to warm up,” the coach told us the night before at eleven-thirty, when the last game ended. “They’ll start sweating the second they walk out the door,” we insisted. We were powerless, though, as we dared not put our sons’ playing time at risk.

It’s eight minutes past seven, and the sun is already searing. The temperature is eighty-one. The Real Feel is one million. I have a large cup of McDonald’s coffee in my hand. Another is seated beside me. I am reading the Lexington Herald-Leader.

A baseball mom trudges in front of the bleachers. She stops in front of me. Stares at me. Incredulous. “How can you drink hot coffee on a morning like this?” She is not poking fun. She genuinely wants to know.

I lower my newspaper. I try to smile. “How can I not, Missy?”

And so it will always be. I’ve read article after article about the effects of coffee on human health. Through the years, I worried about the possible risks and exalted over the reputed benefits. None of the articles changed my daily habit, though. Today I enjoy all the benefits—improved alertness and a lowered risk of several serious ailments—and suffer none of the possible downsides: jitteriness, insomnia, and heartburn.

I’m no longer a baseball dad at sticky ball fields, but I still live in Kentucky, and it’s only getting hotter. I drink hot coffee every morning, though. I suppose I could switch to a hot-weather alternative and get my caffeine fix via iced coffee, cold brew, or a Frappuccino.

But I don’t. And what does that say about me? Am I so set in my ways that I won’t try a different solution? So rigid that I won’t vary my routine? Too frugal to drive through and buy a cooler version of my morning staple?

Yeah, maybe. I am sort of set in my ways. And I can be a bit of a cheapskate.

But the explanation lies elsewhere. I don’t try a different solution because I don’t have a problem. Ninety-six percent perfect is damn near perfect.

It’s hot outside, but I like to drink hot coffee, Missy.

Black. Every morning. Even in the summer.