Babies are so joyfully proud to outgrow their little non-spill mugs and move up to using "real" drinking glasses! It's a huge triumph, like graduating from diapers and from riding in an infant car-seat. But in recent years, it seems, adults are going back to sippy cups, especially for coffee. And the lids have gotten far more sophisticated—instead of crude tear-open flaps they now have clever slots, sliding valves, and pressure-equalization ports. What progress we've made! It brings to mind Shakespeare's famous lines about the seven ages of man, where after going from babe-in-arms through schoolboy and various adult phases, we come back full circle to toothless second childhood, "Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything." But we've got our sippy cups!

(As You Like It, Act II, Scene vii) - ^z - 2009-01-07