Living Life as a Cup

Today we talk with Claudine the cup as she describes what it’s like to have people drink out of you.

Poor Claudine — Illustration made by the author.

Meet Claudine, the cup. She’s a simple cup living in a simple household. You’d think being a cup is a simple job. All you do is just sit there and hold fluids right?

Claudine disagrees.

Claudine’s usual morning involves her human pouring brown hot liquid into her head. She reeks of this substance called coffee. Claudine hates the smell of coffee.

People pour all kinds of substances into her head like boiling water, alcohol, tomato sauce, soda, and cereal.

Although you can’t tell, cups have very sensitive hearing. Every time you slurp, swallow or make smacking sounds with your mouth a cup hears all of that. To them, those sounds are as loud as the Krakatoa volcanic eruption.

That’s what terrifies Claudine the most. Those sounds. Those yucky wet moist slimy sounds humans make when they drink and swallow. Even after the human is done drinking, those sounds are echoed back to her 1000 times.

Because Claudine comes in a pack of 20. When she dies—usually by shattering to pieces after her human accidentally drops her — she has to relive those drinking moments 20 times or until her human runs out of Claudines.

Being a cup isn’t pleasant after all. As you saw, Claudine has sensitive ears and drinking is a very loud activity. Is there anything you can do to make the lives of the cups in your cupboard easier? No.

Claudine and cups like her will have to learn to just deal with it…20 times.