Raised by a Cup of Coffee
Raised by a Cup of Coffee
by Mason Absher
Way back in the early aughts, the much anticipated transition from dial-up to broadband internet FINALLY allowed us to stream flash animations without waiting years for the video to buffer.
Sites like ebaumsworld, JibJab, and the ultimate show down of ultimate destiny were popping up everywhere.
One of my favorites was Homestarrunner dot net…it’s dot com. If you don’t understand that reference, go interrogate Jeeves for awhile. I’ll be still be here after you’ve finished your good cop, bad cop routine.
Like many millennials, I grew up in an awkward conservative evangelical area.
I was also dealing with a lot of undiagnosed or underdiagnosed neurodivergence and uncontextualized family trauma in the periphery of my life. This often meant I had a hard time connecting with other kids.
We occasionally went to church, but it seemed like my father found something new to dislike about each of them. I didn’t sleep well as a kid, so I usually didn’t like getting up early on a day I didn’t have school.
One summer we started going to this church that has a decent vacation Bible school program. The other kids seemed to find me tolerable and the activities are things I actually like. I think we even played Pokémon until it was discovered to use the sinful word “evolution” in a positive context. The local coalition of Moral Moms promptly confiscated our cards.
By some bizarre twist of fate, we still had access to a computer with high speed internet. In my previous church experiences, it seemed like other kids either wanted to try to find porn or listen to some garbage Christian band. I was pretty uncomfortable with both of those options. Also, I always seemed to get blamed for the porn. Never mind the fact that I spent the entire time pleading with the mouse keeper to navigate to a power rangers site instead.
Anyway…
At first, I thought this was going to follow the usual playbook. However, one of the main kids, a quiet but confidant ringleader type, sits down at the keyboard and types something into the browser. Immediately, I see MUST BE 18+ TO ENTER SITE. “Whoops. Typo” he says. I start thinking “he’s just checking the room to see if anyone is going to snitch and THEN start the porn”. Much to my pleasant surprise, he doesn’t. He just changes the website name by one letter and voila, homestarrunner.com blazes forth. “This is why Cheney leading the charge on tightening those pornography restrictions is so important” he says to me. I say “oh yeah that’s a great point” I had no patience for sex or politics by this point. There was a fresh, new, modern cartoon cued up and I couldn’t wait to get lost in the laughter.
Our ringleader points out that I’m new to the group so we should watch the intro. I’m thinking “oh no, nobody is going to want to watch the intro again” but it turns out everyone is excited to just watch the intro video again. A few swift clicks and we hear that iconic “everybody song”.
Eventually, we see this side character, Homsar. He’s best described as Homestar’s VERY Neurodivergent cousin. He says his classic phrase “I was raised by a cup of coffee.” I felt that.
In my house a cup of coffee, literally a cup of coffee, seemed to be the one consistent thing. My parents? Emotionally over-reactive and wildly inconsistent, but my father’s coffee cup was always there day after day full of hot black coffee at any given time of day. At times it felt like the coffee cup was my real father.
I also loved that the whole crew made Homsar feel at home, especially Homestar who was LITERALLY the star. He always knew how to keep Homsar welcome and included.
Sometimes the simplest thing can provide us a sense of stability. Sometimes we’re Homsar and we need a Homestar to help us out.