Pura Vida

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“I NEED STARBUCKS.”

There is manic glint in my friend’s eyes.  They’re slightly bloodshot and she tries to open them wider but her eyes are restricted by a droop in the upper lids and abyssal black circles underneath.  I begin to chuckle a bit as I go to grab my coat from my locker.

Another friend slumps to my side and says, “No, no, no. Go to Dunkin’ Donuts. They have that ninety-nine cent coffee deal today.

To that statement, there are shouts of excitement and people jump out the door.  But Dunkin’ Donuts doesn’t serve real coffee, they serve a watery, oddly colored, noxious concoction.  (And the one near our high school had a cat running around in the kitchen at the Dunkin’; sometimes there was an odor.)

The Dunkin’ argument had been gone over so many times, that the Starbucks friend, just rolled her squinted eyes over at the Dunkin’ friend and glared at him without saying a word.

“I’m not going to learn some special lingo or whatever just to order my coffee. A small is a tall? That doesn’t even make sense!! Extra hot?  Skinny?  Double?  All those macchiatos, lattes, whatever—they’re just all the same thing! Coffee and milk!”

The three of us go out and they settle on the Colombian coffee at the café that gives us student discounts.  Cheap, tasty, and heartwarming.

I sat there, sipping blissfully away at my home brewed, French-press made Costa Rican coffee as I had been the whole morning.