Personal essays
So easy to build a day around the things that annoy us
Surrounded
It took everything in me not to tell the child sitting at the table next to me to take her feet down off of the seat across from her.
I say child but she was young twenties. Done with college. Med school? Law school?
Something like that. Meanwhile the guy sharing her table was taking selfies of himself not studying and showing each one to her for her approval.
Behind me a middle age woman glares back at me when I turn to see why she’s talking to her boss on speaker phone about things that should be confidential.
Her look says, “hey, this is a private conversation.”
My eye roll says, “it absolutely should be.”
I turn back to my laptop and wonder if I should have stayed at home.
The order
Nah, I had to get out of the house.
After producing six videos for an upcoming series on Geometry, I had to go somewhere.
Coffee and internet.
Ten minutes later I’m in line with no one in front of me, two employees behind the counter, and neither of them interested that they have a customer.
After a minute or two, there’s a lull in their conversation and the woman turns to me as if I’ve just arrived and she’s been waiting to take my order.
I want a pour-over but have the feeling that I should order something simpler so I ask for a drip coffee for here.
She asks if that will be all.
I look in the pastry case and it contains a single chocolate chip cookie. Gluten free.
No thanks, I tell her.
She rings up the order, I pay, and the phone rings.
She answers the phone and waves me down the counter to where she’ll deliver my order.
She picks up a to-go cup and I say quietly that the coffee is for here, can she put it in a carafe like usual.
She ignores me but stops pouring while she talks on the phone.
The coffee
Her co-worker heard me and has wandered over.
I tell him that I don’t think she heard me.
He nods to tell me he’s got this.
She finishes her call and starts to pour again and her co-worker tells her that coffee for here is served in a carafe and he shows her where it is. He tells her which cup to serve with the carafe, and tells her to rinse both with hot water.
Ahh. She’s new.
She rinses neither with hot water.
She takes the to-go cup with a tablespoon of coffee on the bottom and tips it over, upside down, on top of the other cups. She doesn’t notice the coffee dripping down the outside of the entire stack.
She weighs out the coffee and places the carafe and the mug on a tray and presents it to me.
Thank you, I say. And I mean it.
The jolt
I sit with the coffee and take a drink.
I swear I have one of those science fiction moments.
There’s the moment when the hero reaches to touch some one and with a jolt can somehow sense their history and hidden secrets.
The woman with her feet up on the chair no longer bothers me. Her companion hasn’t tired of taking selfies, but I no longer care. The conversation the woman behind me is having has faded.
It was me, all along.
I was in an awful mood.
I needed to make an adjustment.
The two minutes in line didn’t matter.
The coffee ended up in the carafe as I’d wanted.
The coffee is brewed perfectly.
Before that it was ground, roasted, transported, and grown exactly right.
It’s so easy for me to focus on the things that annoy me. Wait, what do you mean the internet is down?
I take another sip, close my eyes, and consider the multitude of activities that were required to produce that jolt in the cup of coffee in front of me.
Essay from Dim Sum Thinking Newsletter 178. Read the rest of the Newsletter or subscribe