Tuesday Morning, The Year Zero.

I finish my morning chores at the office and start thinking about my second cup of tea for the day. I remember that, when I made my first cup of tea this morning, I used the last two yellow packets of the artificial sweetener I prefer and I can't drink my tea without two little yellow packets melted in it. So, I think about running to the supermarket to buy a box of the little yellow packets and keep them my desk for emergencies such as this one but then I remember that the supermarket makes me do "self-checkout" if I have fewer than five items (or to quote the supermarket, "less than" five items) and I refuse to selfcheckout because the supermarket won't give me a discount for performing this chore and Ive told the supermarket, repeatedly, I would be happy to check myself out if they give me a discount based on the difference between what they pay the checker / bagger and what the store saves when I do all the work myself but they always look at me as if I might work for the post office so I never go there to buy fewer than five items of anything. Including little yellow packets of artificial sweetener. I think about swinging by my house as I only live five minutes from the office but I realized I will probably get distracted because Microsoft pushed a Vista patch to main production computer and the patch wrecked the driver for the nVidia 10/100 Ethernet card in the computer, and I would spend hours trying to figure out how to get the repaired driver off the internet when I dont have an internet connection and then I will work myself into a foul mood because I'm not sure I even want to use an nVidia 10/100 connection in the first place and am tempted to slam in a 3Com 3C905b 10/100 card that Always Work All The Time and go with that. --Durn it. So, I decide to go to Peet's and score a dozen little yellow packets because, after all, if you buy even one coffee at Peet's I think this gives you the privilege of extra yellow packets between right now and perhaps the end of my life. I mean, afterall, those prices! For coffee and milk?!? Yes. Ive paid for several pockets full of little yellow packets so, I go to Peet's and the morning rush is over and all of a sudden I realize that, without a throng around the cashier and the barista station, I

will be strolling into the store under the attentive eyes of probably three baristas, walk up to the condiment station and then embarrass myself when the baristas see me pocketing a dozen little yellow packets and Im soooooo Middle Class I wont be able to stand the shame even though Id be In The Right and have Principle on My Side. G-d, I hate being sooooo Middle Class but thats what Im stuck with. Okay, Ill buy a cup of coffee. I queue up in the abbreviated line to place my order and take my place behind a lady waiting for the lady in from of her to finish paying for five complicated custom coffees with pocket change, mostly nickels and pennies. Then the lady with the change finds three wheat pennies in the pile of change shes spilled onto faux marble counter and doesnt want to spend her wheat pennies because her father collects them. I can understand that because my dad collected wheat pennies too. Eventually, her transaction is completed and the nineteen-year-old, hotsy-totsy cashier wearing lots of ink and metal and those things in her earlobes that remind me of pictures I've seen in the annual African Tribe issue of National Geographic and Ms. hotsy-totsy, she looks up at the lady in front of me and then she looks at me and asks, "Sorry for the wait, who's next?" and the hotsy-totsy cashier maintains eye contact with me and two things come to my mind: First Ms. hotsytotsy shouldn't apologize for the wait because sometimes I pay with change too, and Two, "Why is she staring at me?" The lady in front of me steps forward and the cashier throws down a challenge shifting her gaze to the lady queue up at the counter: "Are you sure you're next?" The lady I've been waiting behind turns around and makes eye contact with me with an incredulous expression springing from an interior monologue that probably goes something like this: "Excuse me, but I have practiced waiting in lines longer than youve been alive and I'm pretty damn certain I'm next and, you, the guy behind me, whose side are you going to take? You need to chose sides right now."

I shift my eye contact from the incredulous lady to the hotsy-totsy cashier and say in a firm, even voice, "The lady's next." The cashier asks, "Are you sure?" and I replied, "I'm quite certain." And I catch the eye of the lady in front of me and she's relieved that the fabric of civilization hasnt become too frayed yet even though the hotsy-totsy cashier has ear lobe ornaments that are the size of salad plates. And Im relieved that the lady orders one small, simple coffee, pays for it, receives it and takes a seat outside to be with her terrier leashed to the table. Simple. Fast. Get through this and move on. My turn. My strategy: Buy a small coffee (not tea) to cover me loading my trouser pocket with little yellow packets because I don't like to order tea at Peet's even though Peet's has better tea than Starbucks. See, Peets thinks theres such a thing as Lavender-flavored Earl Grey tea and thats just wrong, wrong, wrong because Earl Grey tea is Black Tea flavored with oil of Bergamot, a type of citrus commonly found in Spain. (In my mind, the Bergamot is the Spanish equivalent of an Etrog.) Peets is Simply Wrong, Wrong, Wrong about this and cant be trusted. Furthermore, ordering tea at Peets makes me feel as if Ive stepped into a Bar-BQue joint in my home town, Fort Smith, Arkansas, and ordered a vegetable platter (which probably doesnt exist but Im trying to make a point.). So, I order a simple, black coffee, small, which I don't really want but I'll enjoy the caffeine buzz anyway and Ill get a dozen little yellow packets on the way out. "Room for milk?" the cashier asks. "No thanks," I reply. "Then here you go. That'll be $2.95. (Hoooo!) And heres a coupon for a free cup of Peets because you let that lady cut in front of you," hotsy-totsy cashier says. Thankfully, the lady in question was outside fondling her terrier.

"That lady didn't cut in front of me," I said. Keep the coupon. "I saw her do it and you were too nice to say anything about it," hotsy-totsy says a big smile on her face, her earlobes waggling back and forth as if she's Dumbos mother every time she manages to articulate a syllable with that nail in her tongue. I become agitated. "No, I'm not too nice not to have not said anything about it," and I freeze when I hear myself pronounces such an horribly awkward sentence and begin to feel ashamed and addlepated. I continue, "I'm from Brooklyn and if she had cut in front of me, I would have let her -- and everyone else here -- know about it." "Of course you would," hotsy-totsy says as she slides the coupon towards me and I notice she has words tattooed on the fingers of her right hand that make a sentence. Choose is on her index finger, Death is on her middle finger, Before is on her ring finger and Dishonor is on her pinky. Im rather impressed that the longest word is on her smallest finger even though I'm trying to divine how a nineteen-year-old might define "Dishonor." Her patronizing tone feels like honey filling up my sinuses and suffocating me. So, I'm flailing about in complex emotional currents. First, my very manhood is being assailed. Hotsy-totsy cashier with a picture of the Transamerica building on her right forearm and Coit Tower on the left thinks thinks Im a Wimp and cant defend myself against casual breaches of etiquette when the truth is precisely the opposite. I can defend myself rather well, thank you very much, and have proved this point of character by defending myself in some very complex, over-heated lines such as one at the Fort Lauderdale Airport where I finally, inch-by-inch, hour-by-hour arrive at the security check point with $5 half-pint bottle of water in my bag and was told that the water isn't allowed through and I say, OK and I walk over to the trash can, deposit my $5 bottle of water therein and return to the head of the line. The TSA StormTrooper tells me I must queue up at the end of the Epic Line populated by overtired, sunstroked families in Act Five of their Trip To Disney World. So, I got all Brooklyn on the TSA StormTrooper and made a

vehement case that I would be delighted to escalate our dialog into a F**king Attica-scale Riot Moment if he doesn't deign to treat me as a human being instead of a cow in a feedlot. I tell TSAStomTrooper his professional repertoire is going to change right now and I was return to the head of the line. Yeah, I was overcaffeinated that morning and somewhat unhinged by spending a week at a Very Boring Conference in the Very Humid and Completely Surrealistic Environs of The Happiest Place on Earth. But, back at Peets Making matters worse is the smell of the cashier's tone, a smell telling me Im being patronized which is a familiar smell to me because I patronize people all the time except Im so good at it most people dont even know Im being patronizing, sometimes even condescending. That's how good I am. And hotsy-totsy cashier is annoying the bejeesus out of me because she isnt good at being patronizing. Adreneline flows through my lymph nodes (arteries??) and Im ready to prove my point to hotsy-totsy cashier who has a tatoo of two lengths of barb wire circling her neck which I notice is very short and it makes her look as if her head is sitting right on top of her shoulders on a swivel. I think it must have been very difficult to get that tattoo and whether or not she has any problems with fungus growing in the folds of her skin during the summer time when she sweats. Then, there was a miracle An Angel intervened. For those who know me, you already know I believe My Girl from Brooklyn is the best person Ive ever met so far and she immediately poses the question to me in her Betty Boop voice: Whats the right thing to do? Whats the mitzvah? Were My Girl from Brooklyn standing beside me, she would changed this game to her advantage and take home the First Place Trophy or, in this case, My Girl from Brooklyn would score four more coupons, learn the name of the cashiers mother, the elementary school hotsy-totsy attended, probably know the cashiers little brother, and stroll out of Peets with one of those cardboard boxes filled with a gallon-and-a-half of hot coffee, a sleeve of hot cups, stack of

java jackets and a sponsorship for the Annual Art Auction she manages. The teacher's lounge would be in rapture. All this flashed through my mind, accelerated by the adrenaline pumping through my lymph nodes(??). I take my eyes off the upside-down five-pointed star tattooed between hotsy-totsys eyebrows like a bindi. I know I can't be as good as My Girl from Brooklyn but I don't have to be as bad as I can be or want to be. I say, Thank you, collect my change, pocket the coupon, grasp my small coffee and briskly walk out of the store, carefully get into my car without spilling the coffee, turn on Michael Krasney's show on KQED-FM to distract myself, drive back to work, card in, sit down at my desk with that cup of coffee thats still too hot to drink and of course remember I forgot those little yellow packets and hate myself that day until 2.30p. So, I might be the better person but I don't have my little yellow packets and I hate that. A lot.