And That's How We Got Our Coffee Cup Tree

Story Sent in by Nick:

For a date, Mae invited me to help her plant some flowers in a nearby community garden. We had a good time and then went out for coffee. It was a nice day so we took our drinks to go and we walked around the neighborhood, back in the direction of the garden.

We entered the garden and Mae picked up a spade, dug a hole, and put her coffee cup inside the hole. She then buried it.

I asked her what she was doing and she said that she was planting coffee. I pressed her for more of an explanation and she said that she had read an article that said that if you buried a coffee cup with coffee grinds still within it, it would eventually sprout into a coffee plant.

I laughed out loud at this but she was very serious. I told her that she was effectively littering and possibly hurting other plants in that area. She ignored me and we continued our walk. But I was seriously concerned for her mental state and so I ended the date as genially as possible.

Later that day, just after sunset, I returned to the garden to dig up the coffee cup. I know it was just one cup, but it stuck in my mind and I just wanted to throw it away. Call me OCD. Whatever. It was litter and it was an otherwise nice community garden. I threw the cup away and put the dirt back the way it had been before.

The next day Mae called me and asked, "Did you dig up the coffee cup I planted yesterday?"

"No," I replied.

She said, "Well someone did and now I have to go out and buy a whole other cup of coffee. But I don't understand why it was dug up and nothing else around it was dug up. It's like someone went there to dig up just that cup."

I asked, "How do you know it's not there anymore? Did you actually go and dig up that area again?"

She replied, "I wanted to see if it was sprouting, yet. It's supposed to take no time at all and when it didn't sprout this morning I got suspicious."

I said, "You know that coffee doesn't grow from used coffee cups, right? That article you read was false."

She paused on the line and asked, "What article?"

I was done with her at that point, but I was sure to call and leave a message with the community organization that managed the garden. I gave them Mae's information and let them know that there was a good chance that she'd try to bury more garbage in the plots.