emmanation

I’m not equating Starbucks with heaven, here.

Yesterday, I had a short day on campus (done at 11 due to a cancellation by my grader, who I am starting to think is never actually on campus yay!). I dragged my ass to the gym when I got back to Louisville, and then immediately headed over to Starbucks to meet the lovely Laura.

I beat her there.

I ordered some hot tea.

I found a table, set down my tea, set down my laptop, took off my jacket, and got ready to sit down. In the process of sitting down, I put my hand on the corner of the table, which, it turns out?, was not totally stable.

The tea that had been handed to me 25 seconds earlier spilled all over my forearm, and then my pants and school bag, and then the floor.

People immediately started handing me napkins and a very nice woman went up to the counter to ask for a towel. The barista told her they’d send someone out with a mop in a second.

I didn’t have more napkins, so I just stood there waiting – and I realized that my arm was burnt.

Like, burnt burnt.

I started to cry.

There was literally nothing I could do about it. It hurt like a motherfucker, my bag was wet, my pants were wet, and even my laptop had a few drops on it.

Everyone was looking at me, and I was crying. Like, tears streaming down my face crying, not like big whopping gasps of air snotty nose crying.

The thing is, it actually doesn’t sound that terrible. I mean, the burnt arm sucks. The barista gave me some burn cream as soon as she saw it, and I rinsed it under cold water and then slathered that on. Now it really only looks like a bad sunburn. The rest, though, what? It’s not like I know those people. It was like three Starbucks away from my home Starbucks (yes, a ‘Starbucks’ is a valid unit of measure). I won’t see any of them again, and they could all see that I was burnt, and probably they weren’t judging me anyway because people don’t really think that much about other people.

But still.

The rest of the day, I cried off and on. I said something sweet to Laura and got teary. Laura said something sweet to me and I got teary. Crockett ate something that I wanted to eat and I cried. I took a shower and it was hot and I cried. I scraped my arm with my jacket and I cried. We went to eat pizza with my mom and we got a table I didn’t like and I welled up.

I’m not actually sure what was going on. I don’t know if I felt dumb and that made me sensitive, or if my arm made me sensitive, or what.

All I know is that immediately following my tears in Starbucks, the whole rest of my day blew.

Starbucks is definitely not heaven.