3B

Managing Editor:

Dayton Hare

Copy Editors:

Elise Laarman

Finntan Storer

Wednesday, September 5, 2018 // The Statement 

Tea Leaves: I am happy to chat with you, 

just not at Starbucks

T

here are certain places I tend 
to avoid when I return to 
my hometown after a year 

away at college. The notorious town 
watering 
holes: 
June 
graduation 

parties, the grocery store on Sunday 
evenings, 
Starbucks. 
These 
three 

places can all be classified by their 
likelihood of neighborhood small talk, 
typically conversations that often 
prompt questions concerning my own 
college experience.

Still, 
I 
acknowledge 
these 

exchanges are inevitable when you 
leave a place that knows all the sticky 
PB&J crumbs of your childhood 
(including a Bangles talent show 
routine 
and 
cringeworthy 
floral 

headband phase) and then you return 
to find a local cavity of knowledge. 
So instead, I do my best to see the 
people with whom I genuinely owe 
a candid conversation, and for those 
brief interactions at the watering 
hole, I rely on my rolodex of prepared 
responses.

I 
spent 
the 
summer 
quite 

successfully adhering to my plan. 
That is, until a good friend invited 
me for a cup of coffee at the third 
destination on the list of places I avoid 
in my hometown: Starbucks. When 
she picked me up in her doorless Jeep, 
I knew that discretion was not going 
to be the vintage of this excursion.

Starbucks. The town square for 21st 

century suburban life.

Besides a corporate guarantee that 

no matter which Starbucks location 
you visit your nuanced drink order 
will taste the same, there is also a 
latent promise that you will run into 
at least three people from your life. 
Going to Starbucks is akin to posting 
a social media photo in real life. The 
experience is specifically crafted to 
let the world know you were there.

Think about it. There is a reason 

beyond caffeine that people feel the 
need to walk into a meeting with the 
ubiquitous mermaid-stamped cup in 
their hand.

The convoluted drink orders are 

like the personalized photo edit 
settings of your VSCO feed — a strange 
mix of pride and mystery veils both. 
The Lululemon clad mother in front 
of me orders, “I’ll have a caramel 
macchiato, venti, skim, extra shot, 
extra hot, extra whip, sugar free.” 
I haven’t had a “go to” Starbucks 
drink order since seventh grade 
when 
everyone 
drank 
chocolate 

chip frappuccinos. For those who 

are unfamiliar with this gem on the 
Starbucks menu, a chocolate chip 
frappuccino is what you drink when 
hot chocolate becomes a faux pas 
circa fifth grade. It is the middle 
school drink of choice. You know, 
when you need all that caffeine to 
finish reading “Crispin.”

It is my turn to order and I am 

already flustered. I have taken Spanish 
for 12 years yet my acquaintance with 
the romance languages still does not 
prove useful when trying to decode 
the Starbucks menu. “Umm, I will 
have a medium Earl Grey tea.” The 
barista is staring me down when she 
asks, “You mean a grande?” I have 
never understood the logic behind 
the Starbucks drink sizing. You would 
think “grande” would mean “large” 
but it doesn’t — it implies medium.

I reach into the depths of my Vera 

Bradley wallet (the occasion called 
for it) and hand over a dusty Starbucks 
gift card left over from a high school 
secret Santa gift exchange. “There 
are only 43 cents left on this,” the 
barista says. Forty-three cents left 
on the $5.00 gift card — matching 
the subtle five points of a star and 
the $5.00 price tag that paints the 
chalkboard menu.

The signature scent envelopes me 

as I carry the $5.00 cup of tea. The 
distinct aroma of a Starbucks — nodes 
of java beans and burnt cheese — 
become my perfume for the rest of the 
day. Everyone knows where you were 
after you spend an hour sitting in a 
Starbucks. No need for an Instagram 
geotag.

My friend chooses a seat on the 

storefront patio to soak in the dog days 
of summer before we both head back 
to school. She asks if the seat is okay, 
given her awareness of my preference 
to avoid the inevitable neighborly 
interactions of a Starbucks visit. I 
reply that the seat is perfect, mostly 
because I don’t think it is possible to 
be a fly on the wall in the bustling 
hometown coffeehouse.

I smile and nod as the overlapping 

figures of our past wave, approach 
the table and affectionately question 
us both about college. A trademark 
Midwest 
politeness 
threads 
each 

conversation, which instantly warms 
up my cold aversion to their questions, 
just like chicken noodle soup from the 
crock pot on a subzero snow day.

Admittedly, 
these 
impromptu 

college recap Q&A’s that have become 
routine upon a year at college are a 
privilege in itself. The opportunity 
to talk about personal interests and 

academic achievements are questions 
to which I am lucky to have at least 
some version of an answer. Even if 
those answers rival the incompleteness 
of the 1000-piece puzzle that sits on 
the dining room table all summer.

I asked my friend why she choose 

Starbucks as the venue for our final 
goodbyes. She laughed and explained 
how in her mind, docking in Starbucks 
for an afternoon lets everyone know 
she survived a year at college. That she 
is alive and well. She calls it “letting 
them know she has a pulse.”

As I processed her response, I 

began to wonder, maybe I had been 
viewing the genre of college recap 
conversations wrongly. We live in 
an age trademarked by the pressure 
to share with people where we are 
and what we are doing — it’s the very 
ethos of the Starbucks experience. 
But, for those brief interactions at 
the watering hole, maybe small talk 
is a rare chance to tell the Hollywood 
version of the story: to share an 
elegant, G-rated, 90-second exchange 
about the college experience. Your 
high school algebra teacher, the 
mother of kids you use to babysat 
and the peers you graduated with 
all know college is hard. Small talk 
shouldn’t be too.

BY SHANNON ORS, DAILY STAFF REPORTER

File Photo/Daily

