Every morning has its sacrosanct rituals. A.M. sustenance delivered through a jaded cigarette or an advantageous bagel. A subway commute whose starts and stops follow the same melodic rhythm day after day. And of course, the sacramental procedure that is your coffee order.
The boastful declaration of how one ‘takes it’ seems almost symbolic of some defining archetype. No milk, no sugar: you pride yourself in your ability to cut through the clutter. No milk, two sugars: you’re steadfast, but temperate. Coffee with your milk? Unapologetic.
Over time and with steadfast procedure, you become proud of the relationship you create with your barista. You have a bit of shaudenfrueder when you see Instagram’s deluge of frosty caffeinated containers inscribed with Shellys spelt with a C and an I; Toms that look more like an Ashley; Sarah’s who have to grab their double pump, mocha non-fat, no-skim cappuccinos under the name, Burt.
There is a sense of local superiority in one’s ability to be recognized and remembered by an employee. Especially for something as significant as a coffee order.
It was a particularly blustery morning when I stepped into the café of 6th Avenue and saw the familiar face of my personal coffee crafter, my energy giver, my life saver: Glenn.
Typically, when I would ask, “How’s it going, Glenn?” his response would consist of “Oh, you know. Another day, another day.” Or “Just gett’n by. Just gett’n by.” Or the occasional, “Another morning, here we are.” These redundant statements were ones I would typically, if not systematically, dismiss without any thought.
And I might have continued on this way except for the day when everything changed. “How’s it going, Glenn?” “Good,” he responds. Good? In how many years had he never actually responded to my question with a proper answer? But now, seemingly out of nowhere, he decided to give me an appropriate reply? Had he been paying as little attention to what I was asking as I did to what he was saying? And if so, why was I hurt by that?
Like dating someone who you want to break it off with, but when you realize he had the same thing in mind you get angry and frustrated that he wouldn’t at least try to make it work.
That’s when I realized that these seemingly meaningless humdrum statements of recurrent facts meant more than just a simple glitch in the grammatical matrix. Until now, Glenn’s sayings held as much intellectual perplexity as, “A chair, is a chair.” But that morning I finally grasped that our routine exchange held as much symbolic importance as any other part my morning ritual. And that’s when it hit me that all of my morning rituals were basically meaningless. But put together, they represented my eccentricities and my habits and I held that as something very personal that needed to be protected. We don’t realize the comfort in our daily systems until they are changed. And once they are, we seek to understand why we never held them sacred to begin with.