coffee
talking about coffee, and sharing your today’s coffee for asynchronous sip.
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My first job out of school in New Hampshire had a partnership with Dunkin Donuts. We were basically given infinite gift cards, so we went to Dunkin Donuts all the time. The actor John Cho - of Harold and Kumar fame - was visiting for a day. I was assigned as his point person.
I picked John up from the airport. He asked if we could go get coffee before starting our schedule because it had been a long trip for him from Los Angeles. I said, "Of course." I drove him to Dunkin Donuts. He already looked tired, and he didn't look any less tired after the coffee.
Staring out at the pine trees passing us on the rural roads, he eventually asked me very politely, "Is there anywhere I could get another cup of coffee?" I asked, puzzled, "You want me to take you to another Dunkin?" He looked crestfallen at my response and tried to reformulate his question.
"I mean, is there anywhere I can get a real cup of coffee?" he asked. At this point in my life, I had never had an espresso before. His question did not compute. He just had a real cup of coffee from Dunkin Donuts. Maybe he was so tired that he was hallucinating.
I gently told him that the coffee at Dunkin Donuts is real. He asked me more specifically if we have any places that sell coffee but do not have more than one location. I took him to such a place in the town where we were headed. When we entered this quaint coffee shop, he looked like an astronaut finally touching the earth after a long voyage.
I watched him as he ordered a black coffee that cost three times more than the coffee he just had at Dunkin and had no distinguishable differences to me in appearance. Also, the employees were so much slower at making the coffee there than at Dunkin Donuts. But he seemed to like that it was more expensive and more slow.
He looked at me, with what nearly seemed like tears in his eyes, and said, "Thank you for bringing me here."
Many years later, as an adult living in California with two espresso machines and a collection of whole beans from around the world, I sometimes think of John Cho as I enjoy my coffee. I think about how he was then a 40-year-old actor living in Los Angeles who took a long red-eye across the country and was picked up by a person half his age who kept trying to give him $2 cup of Dunkin Donuts coffee. And I am sorry to that man.
Not all of America runs on Dunkin, but it will always be real coffee to me. 5 replies
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