The Five People You Meet In Line for Coffee

The man in the olive trench coat didn’t get enough sleep last night.

He has a face puffy and pale, with eyes cast downward and eyelids drooping. His shoulders sag, and when he looks up and orders a large coffee, his spine stiffens and he tilts his head back, breathing out a plume of air and squeezing his eyes tightly twice. Then he is handed his coffee and walks off.
The woman in line after him stands phone to ear and orders something exotic sounding, flashing four fingers to note how many sugars she wants. Her conversation is about dog sitters.

Behind her stands a police officer, thumbs tucked in his waistband as he slowly taps his hands against his legs. His walkee-talkee makes a noise. When he orders, he orders four medium coffees, two creams in three, and three sugars in one. He makes sure to say thank you.

This is the most important part of the day.

Like alcohol, coffee straddles the line between luxury and crutch, crossing briefly into the realms of fetish and political statement. What kind of coffee you drink – and how you drink it –  says as much about you as what kind of car you drive. Black coffee drinkers, for example, can be described as either purists, masochists, or unimaginative bores, depending on who’s talking.

For most, coffee stands as a defense against the early morning or mid-day stupor, a magic tonic that can turn the tide of the day from miserable to slightly tolerable. This is the one thing that is shared by essentially everyone standing in line at Starbucks. It’s not the coffee at all, but rather the caffeine brings people back, bleary-eyed, to stand in line each morning and pay $2.00 to save themselves from one of their most natural urges.

It is in this sense that the three people you meet in line for coffee are all one in the same: They’re tired, but also hopeful that the daily ritual of sipping and drinking will once again restore them to the state of themselves that is most conducive to happiness. The coffee only acts a vessel on which the tired of version of themselves sails away, replaced by another self brimming with excitement and buzzing with hope.

image courtesy of flickr user puuikibeach.