Like Me!

On a cold October morning in Kansas City, Sam left his hotel and walked. He wasn’t exactly sure where he was going. Perhaps to that coffee shop he had seen yesterday but didn’t enter.

It was one of those hipster coffee shops where the barista’s were likely to have nose rings and round-rim glasses and wide necked sweaters. All of this was meant to symbolize their uniqueness, their out of step with the herd-ness. If they all hadn’t looked identical it may have given that impression but since they did, it didn’t.

All of this was going through Sam’s head as he pushed open the black wooden door—which rang a small bell on the back of it—and took his place in line. “I wish I didn’t like coming to these places” flashed through his head but he quickly smothered it. That he did like it, he feared, made him just like everyone else. And he was beginning to hate everyone else.

Sam stood in line without his phone. He had accidentally left it by his bed. He tried hard not to look awkward but, to his mind at lest, failed.

“Just a black coffee” said Sam to the pretty, but somehow too thin, lady behind the counter. Sam wasn’t smiling. Not because he didn’t want to but because he was trying something new.

He was beginning to think that when he was overly polite, people didn’t respect him. That they thought him too eager for their approval, which he was. So he had decided not to smile and to say what needed to be said straightforwardly. This, he had hoped, would turn the tables, would cause people to feel the need to win his approval.

“What size?” asked the lady without looking at him.

“Large!” he said, far too loudly. He was offended that she had not looked at him once and wanted her to know that he didn’t care anyway. Sam’s reply came out more abrupt than he had intended, causing those at nearby tables to look up at him from their Apple computers. He felt their eyes upon him and he flushed with embarrassment.

The barista looked at him, startled by his tone. “Are you alright?” She asked with genuine concern. There was something about the sincerity of her tone and her compassionate expression that, as it were, pushed him deeper into his embarrassment. Sam felt he had been found out.

“Oh, just fine … fine … so sorry, sorry.” He said.

“No prob,” said the lady. She took his money, poured his coffee, and handed it to him.

“Next,” she said.