this has been fun.

You go to the coffee shop with a friend, because that’s what friends love to do.  “Let’s go get a coffee?”  It’s either like get coffee or get a drink, which means alcohol.  There’s no middle ground.  You never hear people saying “Hey Chloe, wanna go get some Sprites?”  “Wanna meet for a Gatorade after work? A pitcher of spring water?  Sparkling? Yeah okay.”  I’d like to meet for a Gatorade because at least that would be hydrating, but no, the meetings always revolve around most water depleting thing – the coffee the beer, so you have to be like drinking water all day just to prepare for this meeting with your friend, who you don’t even want to talk to unless you can get either a stimulant or a depressant in your system.

So you get the coffee finally, and it’s like so great, here you are with your friend, with your coffee, just ready to chat and sip some coffee with your friend, but you know what the problem is?  If you try to drink that coffee it will burn your lips right off.  It’s so hot that it’s completely undrinkable for at least 20 minutes.  So have to kind of hold it earnestly in both hands like it’s a prop in some Lifetime Original movie, and you’re content to just sit here and breathe the fragrant steam and talk and smile, but you’re not content, not at all.  This isn’t let’s get together and hold some coffee, this is about drinking coffee, so you have to do this little head swoop to see if it’s safe, like a seal pup heading out into the sea for the first time, you kind of put your mouth close to the brim, and tilt the cup ever so slightly just to test the waters, and then BAM a Great White bites your little seal head right off, and someone films it for a Discovery channel special, and everyone’s like oh that’s so terrible what happened to that baby seal, but look how cute it is kind of tottering around with no head.  There it goes that way.  Oh now it’s going the other way, oh my God I hate to say it Joan, but that is just so cute.  That is adorable.

By this time your friend wants to walk and talk, “Let’s get some fresh air!”  So you try to get the coffee to go.  You wanna put that molten liquid in a paper cup?  Be my guest.  You think maybe you’ll get one of those little brown cup skirts that’s supposed to protect your hand from the coffee, but they don’t work.  It feels fine for the first 30 seconds and then the heat starts seeping through the skirt.  So now you’re kind of shuffling down the sidewalk, and doing the whole hand-switch thing, or trying to get the cup to sit upright in your bag.  Finally you have to set it down on the sidewalk, and just kind of stand next to it, like this is fun, this is great, I’m so glad we met for this coffee.