Metaphor?

Starbucks is – as I’ve said before – where I tithe. Sure, any two-bit financial magazine can point out how much you spend a year on coffee and that if you just invested it at a healthy 8% a year and reinvested the dividends…zzzz…sorry, what’s that? I need some coffee before I listen to your lecture. Know what? Sometimes they have free newspapers, so that’s like a crip $1 bill I’ve saved right there. Besides, the first place I’d go if I had skaty-bajillion dollars would be Starbucks. Also, if I didn’t have coffee, I’d never get out of bed, so I’d lose my job. And the circle of life continues.

Some people think Starbucks is burned tasting. To them I say: shut up. No it doesn’t. Then there are the people who are more on the brick-through-the-window spectrum of fans, either because big corporations aren’t cool or because they put your cousin’s coffee bean farm out of business. I’m sure you’ll be very happy at Gimme! Coffee in Williamsburg. It’s right over the bridge there. Subway’s $2.

Starbucks is my first stop of the day, a clean well-lighted place where I pay five times more than needed in exchange for a skim peppermint mocha. I love my Baristas. (Except for the Special Olympian they have working the bagel orders who toasts the bagels upside down, so the insides stay untoasted. We’ve talked about it. He refuses to see it my way.)

They smile when they see me, know my order before I can pay and call me “sweetheart” and “mi amor.” Last week I got a free cupcake. Basically they treat me better than my last boyfriend.

In our post-modern world (que?) it says a lot that people lead such busy lives that they reach out to Baristas for human interaction. Or not, since just about every culture on the planet discovered cafes before us.

The peppermint mocha is simple enough – coffee, milk, chocolate and peppermint. Christmas in a glass. Today I took a big ol’ swig and discovered they left out the coffee. I don’t know what it means, in the big picture of Life, but it has to mean something, right?