Coffee and Contrast

After nearly a decade of living in this great country I am still always amazed at the contrast in everything I see. Nothing is “normal” here. People are either scintillatingly smart or mind numbingly dumb. Society is either opulent in its splendor or dirt in its poor. The scenery is either breathtakingly beautiful or heartbreakingly shabby. Let me give you a couple of examples. One weekend the boss and I spent the day at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, which is a credit to the town fathers and a wonderful place to be. However drive one block east and things look a bit iffy. Drive two blocks and you are in Pittsville USA. The contrast between the two is amplified by the close proximity of the two. Similarly if you are on the Strip in Las Vegas you can drive one mile north and be in the nastiest, seediest place in the US, and yet you are still on the strip. I have examples ad nauseam but let us not labor the point. The contrast seems to be amplified due to the lack of normalcy to separate the extremes.

One of the pleasures of being a purveyor of stimulants is that I get many opportunities to watch people and invariably enjoy a laugh at their expense. Today an elderly gent shuffled in and it was very clear that he belonged to that most interesting of professions, the Virginia farmer. I don’t know what it is about farmers but they have some great characteristics (great, that is, for taking the piss). They are, for a start, invariably slow. That is not to say they are dumb they just move and think very slowly. They are also profoundly deaf. This I assume is because they have spent the last 85 years driving tractors, thrashing wheat and doing all sorts of other noisy things without the benefit of ear protection. The other amazing feature apparent in a Virginia farmer is the missing body part. Every farmer has something missing. Now I know that farming is a dangerous profession but it cannot be that dangerous surely. It is almost like a badge of honor to sport 8 fingers or a missing foot. I have a theory that farmers get hypnotized by the churning of the harvester and eventually think to themselves “I wonder what would happen if I just put my finger in ……. Jesus Christ”. The final attribute of the Virginia farmer is that they are real tough people. The Smalltown Gazette has at least one story a day of some farmer who had his leg ripped off by some whirling monster machine and then hopped 5 miles to the local hospital to have the limb sewn back on. Of course it might just be that to join the Farmers Union you have to go through an amputation hazing before you can be a brother. Anyhow, back to my farmer. As we were empty (no changes there) I had the time to watch with mild interest as he spent 5 minutes getting from the door to the counter. The following ensued. “Good Morning Sir, what’s your pleasure?” “What?” Oh dear here we go again “WHAT CAN I GET FOR YOU?”. “I would like a coffee”. “Well that’s handy, what with us being a coffee house”. “What?” Oh dear. Well as I have mentioned before I like old people and as we were quiet I gave this old boy all the time, and the volume he needed. He ordered one of the boss’s monster bacon doorsteps and a big drip brew, the standard fare in Smalltown. Well, we had a good old time and once he was caffeined and greased up he slothed off for the door. I had a vision of him being mugged by snails on the way out and then telling the police that he couldn’t give them a description as it all happened so fast.

In contrast (and here is the point of this blog) a few hours later a fit little girly came in for lunch and enquired as to how to use the wifi I gave her the password and got her lunch order. We are generally busy at lunch so whenever she could catch my eye she would look and shrug her shoulders to indicate that she was in trouble. Before I became a Coffee Bitch, amongst many other things, I ran a tech support department. This was in the days when men were men (and so I discovered were some of the women). In those days we had DNS numbers, static IP addresses and gateways. When the network didn’t work, it didn’t work. No helpful clues or troubleshooting tips for me I can tell you. These days networking comprises of turning on the laptop and letting it find the connection. So between bussing tables, refilling coffees and serving the boss’s bistro deli sandwiches I would glance at the screen and do the tech support thing “ Right click on available networks” Two passes around the shop and “ Now select that one” Another pass and “Select, manually enter key”. Soon she was up and running and appeared that the other customers had been following our little saga as a small cheer went up. The cheer turned to laughter when she said, “It looks like you have the right knack” to which I of course replied, “Yes my dear, I also have the left one”. When she came to pay she once again thanked me and with a seductive look asked if I would like to make her feel like a real woman. Never to miss an opportunity I slowly removed my shirt and said, “Iron this and fetch me a beer”. Whatever, she tipped out an unheard of 100% on the bill, which more than paid for the wifi and the tech support, sweet.

On a more worrying note I think that I may have been outed to the Sheriffs department. The ladies were back today and knowing that gun talk was they key to their hearts I gave them a rundown of my inventory of shotguns. For some strange and puzzling reason they then invited me to go fishing with them. Now either this is a genuine gesture of friendship/love/lust or more likely they have read my blog and are planning to take their revenge in a hideously physical manner. Leather and lace I can hardly wait.

So dear reader I am not sure when this trip is going to take place, I have a vision of the girls in brown coming to the shop and taking me away in chains. "Hi there boss, we have just come to take the bitch fishing". If this is the last blog entry and you spot a “Help Needed” sign in the coffee house window then I have been kidnapped and am now the love slave of the ladies in brown. Please call the Smalltown cops (in about 6 months time).
Yours in bondage.

TCB