I just snuck out of the office for a few minutes and went downstairs to Kneaders, a local chain of cafe/bakeries that pours a decent cup of joe. We do have good, fresh coffee available in copious amounts here on the 13th Floor — of course we do, we’re an ad agency; this place would grind to a shuddering, miserable halt without a steady supply of java — but sometimes a change of scenery and a little variation in flavor can be just as stimulating as the dose of caffeine itself, you know? I usually pop down there once a week or so, or sometimes if I’m feeling a little more ambitious, I’ll hike a little farther to Starbucks or Beans and Brews or even the Roasting Company. But today it was just straight down to the food court my new office building looms above, and into Kneaders.

For a simple coffee (as opposed to an espresso or one of the froofy-type coffee drinks), the process at Kneaders is pretty much self-serve. I bought my paper cup at the counter, then walked over to the soda fountain/condiment area and poured my own from the big pump pots there. Since I was indulging in “outside coffee,” I went ahead and added a generous splash of half-and-half, and a couple packets of Splenda, and then… I couldn’t find anything to stir the mixture. None of those little red things that resemble miniature straws, no wooden swizzle sticks. The only tools available seemed to be the plastic flatware offered for people who buy food there. So I pulled out a knife, circled it through my coffee a couple times, and was just lifting my hand to chuck the used knife down the garbage hole when something occurred to me.

About 140 million years ago, some dinosaur dropped dead in a swamp somewhere and decomposed into organic sludge, which then sat unmolested in a rock stratum for eons until some enterprising little bipedal mammals sucked it out of the ground and rendered it into this knife, which I then used for exactly three twists of my wrist before preparing to discard it forever. And suddenly the weight of all that time and energy and effort collapsed down around me like the gallons of hot molten marshmallow that enveloped the dickish EPA guy at the end of Ghostbusters, and I… I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t throw away that unremarkable sliver of black plastic, not after the thought that all that potential added up to such a pathetically brief action.

So I kept it. And I brought it back up the elevator with me. And now it’s sitting on the side of my desk, silently mocking me and my oftentimes ridiculously overdeveloped sense of responsibility for, well, everything…