Coffee Tabled

The word is no. I am therefore going anyway. Give me what I want, and I’ll consider it.

My wife and I were driving around the big city on a Sunday morning. It was almost lunchtime. We had skipped breakfast.

“I could go for some kibble,” I said.

“Actually,” she replied. “Me, too.”

I was a little surprised but excited, too. We were going to eat out. But where? We took out our daggers and prodded each other, as we are often wont to do.

“Wherever you want,” I said.

“No,” she replied menacingly. “Wherever you want.”

Clink. Clink. Clink. The cold steel of our daggers danced their elegant dance.

“Let’s go to the bar you wanted to try. The one with the fried chicken.”

“The hell you say!” I turned the car around. “We’re going to that coffee shop you mentioned the other day.”

“All they got is coffee and baked goods.”

“Excellent,” I emoted, channeling Commander Kruge, the asshole Klingon from Star Trek III: The Search For Spock. “Perfect. Then that’s the way it shall be.”

We weren’t exactly in the best place after I parked the car and we walked into the coffee shop. I had won lost and gotten my way.

As we approached the counter we reached an unspoken agreement to do that thing we sometimes do. Perhaps you know of it? It’s where you conversate in such a way as to put your squabbles on display to some innocent passerby, as if it is entertaining or something. In this case the hapless victim was our barista.

My wife started by ordering something like a coffee drink, only subjected to some sort of miniaturization process. I bet it was the kind of thing that Myron Reducto would order. She told the barista the drink was for “here.”

When it was my turn, I ordered a medium vanilla latte. That’s when the barista decided to get cute.

“Is that for here or to go?”

Hello? Hello? Anybody home? Huh? Think, McFly. Think! I gotta have time to get them retyped. Do you realize what would happen if I hand in my reports in your handwriting? I’ll get fired. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would ya? Would ya?

My wife just ordered her coffee for “here.” Why the hell would I want mine to go? What the hell kind of a stunt are you trying to pull, anyway? Are you a wise guy?

I finally un-flummoxed my tongue and sagely demanded, “Here. I want it for here.”

I wasn’t the only one talking, though. My wife chirped in, on top of me, and said, “To go. He’ll take it to go.”

The barista didn’t miss a beat. It was almost like they had practiced this. They were in sync. Apparently they were both founding members of the We Hate Tom Club. He reached up and pulled a lousy “to go” cup from the stack and plopped it down on the counter in front of me.

Wow.

It’s not easy being me.

I sulked and appeared to enjoy my coffee as I tried to calculate the distance on foot to the land of fried chicken…