"Ewwww" and tea were meant to be

I thought I was doing something clever until I heard a colleague say "Ewww!"

All I did was put a paper clip in my tea. Needed a little extra iron in my diet. Okay, that's not the real reason. The real reason is that my tea carafe has a narrow neck.

Maybe I'd better start at the beginning, but when it comes to tea, that's difficult to do without going clear back to the tea leaf.

They prefer to be free, tea leaves. They like to be tossed into the teapot utterly unfettered, free to unfold and infuse at will. Unfortunately, the academic office atmosphere is not entirely conducive to the unfettering of tea leaves. There's nowhere to put a tea strainer in an office, and anyone who has left behind a tea ball full of wet tea leaves over a long break knows that in the office ecosystem, bags are best.

But not all tea bags are created equal. Some tea bags come with no strings attached, while others have strings that greet the merest hint of water with a hearty cry of "Abandon ship!" It's easy enough to remove a tea bag from a teapot with a wide opening on top, but suppose you inhabit a cold office but you like your tea hot? The solution is a tall insulated carafe of the type used for serving coffee at banquets: stuff the teabags into the narrow opening, hold onto the end of the string, and pour in the hot water--and when the tea is steeped, a gentle tug will remove the bags.

Except when there are no strings attached. How do you remove a water-swollen tea bag from a tall carafe with a very narrow opening? You could search the department office for some plastic cutlery, which is useless for eating real food but works really well at piercing tea bags and releasing their little leaves all over the office. Or you could do what I do: use a paper clip.

This gets complicated, so pay attention: Grasp the longer loop of a large paper clip with your right hand and the smaller loop with your left hand. Pull gently until the two loops separate and the whole thing looks like two ends of a line bending over to greet each other with a Howdy. Pierce tea bags with the end with the smaller loop, twisting to firmly secure tea bags on end of paper clip. Open out larger loop of paper clip slightly. Insert tea-bag end of paper clip into carafe and loop larger end over lip of opening. Hold tightly while pouring in hot water. Steep tea. Remove teabags with a gentle tug, discarding used tea bags and paper clip. Wait for the "Ewwww!"

It's bound to come--if not the first or second time you brew tea this way, then perhaps the seventeenth. Eventually someone will take offense to the fact that you are using a paper clip as a tea-bag holder. Their objections will sound like this: Paper clips are dirty. You don't know where it's been! It could have anything on it from ink to earwax. You're putting that in your tea?

What naysayers fail to appreciate is the efficacy of boiling water. Even if the paper clip you select is not in pristine condition, immersion in boiling water will certainly destroy any disease-causing agents adhering to the paper clip. If nothing else, it'll melt the earwax.

Is there an echo in here, or did someone just say Ewww?