When I looked outside my windows this morning, or, really, a little into the afternoon, it looked mildly cold. Wet from an earlier rain, the first of browned and oranged leaves pasting the ground, like the oversized paper ones that plastered my kindergarten and grade school halls in my forever-fall Halifax memories.
My espresso grounds were old, and I wanted caffeine before I tackled the mountain of dishes I had vowed to myself and my girlfriend I'd clean in the morning. She made dinner, I do the dishes. It's only fair, and I rarely accomplish anything before 4pm anyway. A good goal, baby steps, to start a mite sooner.
So groundless and caffeineless, I threw on my oversized cardigan I got as a Christmas gift last year, which I love in a "I can imagine myself being an old guy, maybe a professor, but definitely a writer" sort of way, and shuffled off to the corner Starbucks, lost in remembering teaching theatre to kids in similarly autumn leaf-adorned kindergarten and grade schools, thinking of all the Starbucks cups I drained waiting for the trains to get there.
Inside, the Asian-American barista took my order, and while she did, half asked her Hispanic-American colleague, who started to make my coffee, what the word for "inch" was in Spanish. He earnestly shook his head, and said he didn't know. I said I didn't think there was a word for "inch," because both Spain and Mexico use the metric system, which, I then felt necessary to mention, doesn't use inches.
If I could measure seconds in centimeters, we swam an Olympic sized swimming pool together, entirely doubting each other's knowledge and education, before she smiled pleasantly and handed me a croissant. America, it seems, goes on for another day.
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