Monarch Butterfly on the Beach

GET WELL SOON!

Dear Ms. R,
I hope you feel better soon! I know that you’re such a good teacher and we don’t want you gone. Did you go to the hospital? Well, that’s all I have to say. Get well soon!
Your student,
M

Anne went back to school on Monday, after missing last Friday, and finished up her school week on Tuesday. Also on Monday, the above note was waiting for her. It is from one of her darling twenty-some fourth grade students.

I planned on giving Anne a ride to school on Tuesday, so Dan could have a car for the day. So, I got up with her at oh-no-dark-thirty. I was doing my best impression of a zombie, from Dawn of the Dead, and heard an emphatic “Oh No!”

It turns out that Anne had forgotten to either get, or ask me to get, several items that she needed for school. Like a knight-errant, I volunteered to go to the store for her. I transformed myself from a lurching zombie to a driving one and headed out. It was not quite six, so most of the service counters were still closed, but the in-store Kaldis coffee bar was open and I decided that I deserved a latté.

Somewhere between 3 AM and 6 AM there must be a magical hour. An hour where bartenders transform into baristas. Maybe this shape shifting barista was a little slow on the draw that morning. His inability to make change for the customer before me certainly spoke to a certain latency.

Bartenders are famous for doing three things well, serving alcohol, listening and offering sage advice, as in, “Sir, don’t you think that you’ve had enough? I think that you should go home. I’ll call you a cab.” Baristas, not so much. At 6 AM it is all about speed. Take the order. Make the drink. Serve it.

I’ve digressed though. I placed my order and I guess that the barista must have sensed my zombie like state and asked, “What brings you out this early this morning?” I said that my wife needed some stuff that she had forgotten to get. The barista response that I got was, “You should get an apartment.” I mumbled some sort of reply. Zombies aren’t expected to be particularly articulate.

Latté in hand, I set upon my scavenger hunt. Loose leaf paper, after staring at it for a minute or two, I figured out that I had found it. With hand sanitizer, I had to escalate to the night stock ‘boys’. Holiday cookies were tricky. Anne had told me that she needed twenty, because she had twenty students in her class. I joked about only getting nineteen, with such a joke on the table there was no room for error, especially since the cookies came in packs of ten.

When I returned home, I related the barista episode. Anne’s first question was, “Was she some cute something?” This jolted me out my zombie like trance. The cute young thing was actually a very male, 65-year-old retired Navy Petty Officer. I guess, I must have omitted that fact.

Anne went to school and told the same story in the same manner to her fellow teachers and elicited the same reaction. Her co-workers went so far as to suggest that the barista’s advice was based upon personal history, bad history. I have received and continue to receive major kudos from my significant other. I love ya, Babe!