The Man and I had spent a quiet night at a state park in a rather remote location. We woke up early, as we tend to do, and The Man realized he’s forgotten to buy ground coffee before we left civilization. The Man needs to drink his coffee every morning or he gets irritable and ends up with a headache. Since he wasn’t going to be able to make his own, he said we really needed to head back into town.
I wasn’t ready to leave the state park; I’d paid my $7–my half of the $14 camping fee–and I wanted to get my money’s worth, dammit! However, what could I do when my partner needed his fix? I could wish he’d thought about being out of coffee when there was a Wal-Mart nearby. I could wish he wasn’t a coffee fiend. I could wish whatever I wanted to wish, but my wishing wasn’t going to change the fact that he needed coffee and we didn’t have any. So we packed up the dog and the few items we’d left out on the picnic table during the night, and he drove the van to the town where we were headed, about twenty miles away.
When we got to town, he decided he didn’t want gas station coffee or McDonald’s coffee. He wanted good coffee, coffee from a local coffee shop. He asked me to use my phone and ask the GoogleMaps lady to find us a local coffee shop.
As we pulled up to the place the GoogleMaps lady had found for us, I saw it was just a drive-thru, not a place where we could go in and sit down. A drive-thru is fine, except for the fact that the van’s driver side window doesn’t roll down. I usually avoid drive-thrus for that reason, but The Man was driving, and he wanted coffee, so I figured he could deal with the window situation.
The second thing I noticed about the place was the Bible verse posted on their sign. I wish I had taken a photo of that sign! I don’t remember what it said, but I immediately knew it had something to do with Christianity. I told The Man, This is some kind of Jesus place.
Neither of us is really into Christianity, although we both think Jesus himself was probably a pretty cool guy. We wouldn’t go out of our way to support a business whose owners are flaunting their religious beliefs, but we wouldn’t necessarily leave for that reason either. This place had coffee, and The Man wanted coffee, so we would go through with our transaction, Bible quote notwithstanding.
There were several cars in line, so we joined the queue. Two wholesome young people–a man and a woman–approached the van. The Man opened his door to facilitate communication. The wholesome young man mentioned the coffee shop was having a fundraiser. He said he and the woman were taking people’s orders before they drove up to the window in hopes of speeding up the transactions. So far, so good.
The Man told them he wanted a large cup of regular coffee. So far, so good.
Then The Man asked about sugar. The Man likes a lot of sugar in his coffee, as do I. However, because he always gets a large cup of coffee, he needs A LOT of sugar, as in twelve packets. Really, he just wants to pour sugar from a big container into his cup, but most places these days, offer no big containers of sugar, only little packets. I’ve heard a lot of rants lately about having to rip open twelve packets of sugar and pour them one-by-one into a tall cup of coffee.
Anyway, The Man asked the wholesome young people something about sugar, and I heard the young woman say she would go find out. She walked away from the van and over to the little building from whence the coffee was to come. She had a conversation with someone through the building’s window, then came back to the van.
They’re out of sugar, she said. Will Splenda be ok?
No, The Man said. Splenda will not be ok. Nevermind. We’ll go somewhere else.
How can a coffee shop be out of sugar? Don’t a lot of people take sugar in their coffee? I bet if Jesus had been around, he would have miraculously turned that Splenda right into sugar for us.
We ended up at a gas station for The Man to get his coffee. They had sugar too, in little packets that he ripped open and poured into his coffee one-by-one.