I know how to make coffee by putting coffee beans in a white gym sock, beating the sock with a hammer, and then boiling the sock full of crushed beans in a pot of water.

We do not do this because we are middle-class people. We own a Keurig coffee maker. We can't imagine living without a Keurig any more than we can imagine living without a quesadilla maker. Of course, no one ever uses their quesadilla maker, which you buy in the first two years of your marriage, before you realize how much frozen pizza you're going to eat in the next 10 years.

We use our Keurig every day, and it broke Sunday night. Our quesadilla maker, on the other hand, will never wear out.

The Keurig, however, broke.

It. Broke.

We make four cups of coffee every morning. We drink one apiece at home, and I take the other two to work in my travel mug, another thing that must be owned by all middle-class people. Owning a travel mug is a sign that you plan ahead. People who don't have travel mugs are likely to be poor, and they're poor because they don't plan ahead. This is true even if the minimum wage is $8 an hour in their state.

Since we're white middle-class Americans with three college degrees between us, and a pristine quesadilla maker, my wife, Deborah, and I were completely and totally shattered by the loss of our Keurig.

We have an insanely complex "pour-over" coffee maker at home, but you have to put coffee filters in it, and it doesn't accept pods of flavored coffee. What are we, animals?

We compromised. We used the pour-over rig to make two cups of coffee at home, and I went to work without a travel mug full of coffee.

I was sad leaving the house without coffee, and my wife, whose name is known to the angels, felt sad watching me leave the house without coffee.

"Stop on the way and get some coffee," she said.

I did not stop. I'm a homeowner. I'm a college graduate. I don't "stop for coffee." I have a travel mug.

I took my empty travel mug with me to work and made coffee in the office Keurig. As far as I know, the office doesn't have a quesadilla maker. And if we do, it's never been used and certainly isn't left out in plain sight where any punk with a tortilla and a handful of cheese could take it's virginity. A Keurig can be used daily, even by strangers, but a quesadilla maker must remain pure.

And both my wife and I told everyone about our tragedy.

"Howyadoin?" Ruth in accounting asked.

"Our Keurig broke," we said. "It just broke. Oh, yeah, and our dog is dead, too."

Actually, we don't have a dog, which is good because, if we did, he would never have tasted a quesadilla, not even if he was a chihuahua.

And people sympathized with us, too.

"That's too bad," they said.

We ordered a new Keurig from Amazon, because we're middle-class people. Anything we don't buy from Target, we order from Amazon. We don't go to Walmart and, if we do, we don't tell anyone. Walmart is for poor people who don't plan ahead.

We have a new Keurig now. It's silver. We are happy. We are middle-class Americans, and we are the largest group of petulant children ever to whine on the face of the earth.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writes and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. Dion's latest book, a whacky celebration of privilege, is called "Devil's Elbow: Dancing in the Ashes of America." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, GooglePlay, Kindle and iBooks.

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