Coffee and Potato Fields #WhatIsThisAboutCoffee
My wife loves coffee.
In comparison, I don't drink much coffee.
There's no deep reason for it; if I had to say, it's just that I prefer tea.
Come to think of it, the reason I can be with my wife might be because she drinks coffee and I drink tea.
I met my wife in a club when we were university students.
I am a genuine introvert, but for a little over ten years starting at age 18, I went through a period where I forced myself to pretend to be an extrovert, and that was when I met my wife.
I was acting flashy.
I was also in a flashy club.
The men in the club were students at my university, and we recruited women from several nearby women's colleges.
It was what you would call an intercollegiate club.
It was called a tennis club, but it was just a club for meeting girls.
We would meet once a week, play tennis for about an hour, then go out for drinks together to lock onto the girls we were targeting; it was that kind of shallow club (as for me, I didn't even own a tennis racket).
From the girls' side, it seemed their goal was also to meet people, and they were all uniformly wearing skirts short enough to see their underwear and were wearing full makeup.
They had no intention of playing tennis, so like me, they didn't have rackets and would borrow them from my upperclassmen.
One day, an upperclassman said that some new girls from a women's college would be joining us starting that day.
At the time, security awareness at each university was low, and we weren't told anything even when we handed out flyers at the school gates, so we were handing out flyers at the gates of various women's colleges almost every week.
We were excited for the arrival of new miniskirts, but what appeared before our eyes was...
A group of five girls wearing black tracksuits from top to bottom, slathered in sunscreen instead of makeup, wearing sneakers, and carrying their own rackets—they had come to play tennis with all their might.
All of us men were taken aback.
That's because I never expected there to be girls who would come to an intercollegiate club seriously intending to play tennis.
We called them 'Potato Girls' behind their backs.
They refused to cut tennis short after an hour to go out for drinks.
They said they wanted to play more tennis.
The girls in short skirts wanted to go out for drinks, but since we couldn't just leave the Potato Girls who were enjoying their tennis, we ended up staying with them until the very last minute the tennis courts were available.
As days like that continued every week, the girls in short skirts stopped coming to the club.
We prioritized the 'Potato Girls' over the 'girls in short skirts'.
We found it more fun to be with the 'Potato Girls' who were working hard at tennis than with the flashy girls whose goal was to meet boys.
Even though we were a frivolous group ourselves... looking back, I feel bad for the girls in short skirts.
After that, our club became a bumper crop of a potato field, overflowing with even more Potato Girls, as the original ones invited many friends, saying they could enjoy tennis there.
My wife was one of the Potato Girls in a black tracksuit.
Even though her outfit was a frumpy tracksuit, I fell in love with her face, which somewhat resembled Yuki, the vocalist of the band Judy and Mary that I loved at the time.
I liked her face, so I tried to woo her, but she had a serious boyfriend back then, and I, who was pretending to be a popular, flashy guy, was completely ignored.
I kept trying to win her over, but I was completely ignored, so I waited three years until she broke up with her boyfriend.
If you ask why I liked her so much, other than liking her face, it was because I didn't feel tired when talking to her.
Until then, I had only dated girls who shared my hobbies or interests, or girls with a similar sense of humor where we could enjoy overlapping our conversations.
Being with people like that was very fun and exciting, but when I got home, a wave of exhaustion would wash over me and my body would feel heavy.
My wife had no interest in humor, our hobbies didn't match at all, and our conversations never really took off.
Even though our conversations didn't get lively, for some reason I felt at peace when we were together or talking, and I didn't feel tired at all.
That hasn't changed even after we started dating and got married.
Possessing a strange sense of service, I would always exhaust myself trying to go beyond my potential just to entertain people or make them laugh.
When I returned home exhausted, my wife was there, someone with whom I could completely switch off.
That was the place where I could keep my mental health sound.
If I, who tend to overthink things, liked coffee just as much as my wife does,
I wonder how I would brew it to make her happy.
I wonder what the best timing would be.
I wonder what kind of beans would be good today.
I wonder if she would prefer it cold or hot.
I think I would end up overthinking it every day like that and gradually wear myself out.
However, fortunately, my wife and I have completely different tastes, so while I am drinking tea, my wife is drinking coffee while looking in a completely different direction.
Thus, having maintained my peace of mind again today, I buy coffee that I don't drink myself and head home.
Because I want to see my wife looking happy while drinking coffee...
Even though I can never seem to remember the types of coffee beans...