D

uring the winter holidays, Augie’s Coffee 
Roasters 
of 
Claremont, 
California 
is 
overflowing with recent college graduates 
reuniting, families stopping for a moment with babies 
in strollers and young couples chatting over matcha, 
oat milk lattes. The customers spill out to the tables of 
the Packing House, a relic of the ancient Californian 
citrus empire that’s been repurposed into a village 
attraction, complete with artists’ lofts and a used 
bookstore. 
It’s a joyous scene — a busy one — and a testament 
to a downtown that’s really come into itself over 
the past decade. Claremont, my hometown, is a city 
superficially similar to Ann Arbor, in terms of coffee 
shop offerings and deliberately cultivated, upper-
middle class quirk. After all, all happy college towns 
are alike.
I found myself at Augie’s not to meet old high 
school friends or catch up with extended family, 
but rather to seek out a small bit of normalcy in the 
strange, boneless time of year that is winter break as 
a college student. After a semester of a meticulously 
scheduled Google Calendar, a planner overflowing 
with deadlines and overly-optimistic aspirations, 
friends’ birthday parties and Rick’s Thursdays, 
moving back into my mom’s house for a few weeks 
tends to feel weird, for lack of a better word. The 
structure I’ve built around myself in Ann Arbor 
dissipates, and there’s the constant, uneasy feeling 
of falling backwards in time, the hovering fear that 
without a booked schedule and my college friends 
around me, I’ll revert back to my 17-year-old self — a 
terrifying prospect.
Coffee shops, however, are familiar territory. 
Having spent the majority of the past three and 
half years buying overpriced coffee with most of 
my minimal income, using the flimsy justification 
that the caffeine will power me through the essay of 
the moment, I know my way around these spaces. I 
know how to be myself — the college-aged version of 
myself, that is — in coffee shops, whether they are in 
Michigan or California.
So, I swapped out my living room couch for Augie’s, 
and set up shop with my book of the moment — 
“Commonwealth” by Ann Patchett — at a wobbly 
table in the interior of the Packing House, adjacent to 
Augie’s storefront.
Surrounded by the chaos of happy reunifications, I 
was particularly conscious of my solitude. So, my relief 
was palpable when I made the discovery that I had a 
lone comrade in my reading pursuits — a blonde boy 
sitting diagonal from me, buried in an unidentifiable 
paperback. He seemed utterly undisturbed by the 
goings-on around him, absorbed in some alternate 
world in the pages of his beat-up novel.
We were sitting facing each other, yet at a safe 
enough distance that I managed to sneak glances in 
his direction, intrigued by my fellow reader. What 
was he so engrossed in? Did he also feel self-conscious 
at sitting alone while laughter rang around us?
I pulled out my phone to check Instagram and 
was immediately ashamed of myself — my reading 
companion would surely never be so superficial as 
to put aside his literature for the banality of social 
media. Several minutes later, however, I caught 
him setting down his book spine-up on the table to 
scroll through his phone for a few minutes, and was 
reassured. We were kindred souls, I reasoned: both 

big fans of reading and good literature, yet not so 
self-righteous that we were above the distractions of 
social networks. He got me, I got him. 
My companion had to be somewhere in my age 
range, had the look of an older college student or 
recent grad and seemed like someone also trying to 
get some breathing space from his family over the 
holidays. He was blonde and clean-cut, so I figured 
he was either an economics major or beginning his 
studies at dental school. Not the most breathtakingly 
handsome man I’d ever seen, but definitely workable 
material. We’d get along, I speculated, and though we 
probably wouldn’t have the same music taste, I could 
see him wanting to talk about politics or check out 
new independent films. He’d get along great with my 
dad.
For an hour, we sat as such, me buried in 
“Commonwealth,” and him in his respective reading 
pursuit. Customers came and went — a loud woman 
with neck tattoos vacated the table to my left in favor 
of a young father, whose toddling offspring attached 
herself to any and all passersby. I smiled, and out of 
the corner of my eye, caught him smiling at the same 
moment.
Suddenly, there came the worst possible betrayal 
— I looked up from a particularly engrossing chapter 
to realize that my companion had vanished, leaving 
behind an empty chair and table. The dad and child 
were still to my left, as were the loud, grad students 
behind me, but his place was undeniably vacant.
What disloyalty! Such treachery! We’d built a future 
together in the hour that had passed in Augie’s — and 
this boy had the nerve to throw it all to the wind!
Only now sitting truly alone and feeling quite 

jilted — but also rather amused — at my evaporated 
fantasies, did I allow myself to float down to reality.
Sure, it was the idea of it. Of course, it was, it always 
is, right? The idea that buying a new top will fix all 
my problems, the idea of the perfect internship in 
a big city and the idea of the guy in the coffee shop. 
The ideas that always tend to turn out the same way 
— the top predictably ends up being just a top, the 
perfect internship inevitably ends up being at least 
80 percent busy work. The guy leaves the coffee shop 
before anything ever begins. 
It’s the idea that college has made me more 
educated, thoughtful and self-confident — worlds 
away from the insecure 17-year-old that frequented 
this same coffee shop four years — a lifetime —ago. 
The self who breezes through her hometown on short 
visits before moving on to bigger and better things. 
A self who has perfected herself in every possible 
aspect — overcome all her flaws, a self who no man 
would (ever) turn down — or even, god forbid, fail to 
approach in the neighborhood coffee shop.
I told myself he probably had awful breath. Or 
maybe he was studying finance and would have ended 
up to be one of those men who would advise me on my 
401k within the first few minutes of a conversation.
So caught up was I in my new justification that I 
almost missed the blond guy returning to his seat — 
he’d only gone for a coffee refill. 
We read together, sitting at our separate tables, for 
another two hours, before parting ways. This time, 
it was I who left first and who neglected to bid him 
farewell. I could have talked to him, I suppose, but 
what would have been the use of that? It was only ever 
just the idea of it.

3B

Wednesday, January 8, 2020 // The Statement
3B

BY MEGHANN NORDEN-BRIGHT, STATEMENT COLUMNIST
The idea of it

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL

I thought I’d aged out of this years ago. I’m sitting criss-cross-applesauce in my apartment while my roommate 
straightens my hair. The brush catches my hair knots and pulls my head back like the boys in my elementary 
school used to do, though it wasn’t because they liked me. 
The hair situation isn’t going as planned. My curls are beginning to spring back from stress sweat, either caused 
by the fact that I’m going to a dance with a stranger or the fear that I won’t fit in with the crowd. I have less than 
20 minutes to figure out how I can turn my curly hair, acne and glasses into something remotely resembling a 

