by Carl Conrad

Created on: February 26, 2009

Coffee For An Older Man ~

As I turned sixty, my niece thought that I had been alone too long since my wife died more than six years ago. She thought that by arranging for her divorced mother and I to get together, it might be good for both of us. What I didn't realize is how much the world of coffee and other things had changed since I'd been out.

Nancy, her mother, and I were introduced at a wedding that I was talked into attending. It was something that I normally wouldn't go to, but Alicia, my niece, worked on me for several weeks to make sure that I would go. She even bought me a new shirt and tie to wear with my one dark suit, then had worked it out so that Nancy and I would be seated together at dinner during the reception.

We hit it off quite well. Nancy was very knowledgeable about many things, and made the conversation go easily. We talked about movies and gardening, some of the places we had traveled to. We talked about pets and our hometowns, even about our departed spouses. We also danced to several slow songs, but sat down during the more raucous numbers like the Chicken Dance and the Hokey Pokey. While these were wedding favorites, they were a bit too much wiggling, jiggling, and giggling for us.

As it was getting near 9:00 pm, I asked Nancy if she would like to go out for a coffee. She was very gracious and said that would be splendid, so we got our coats. As we were leaving, Alicia smiled at us mischievously, and slipped her cell phone into the pocket of my suit coat. She told me that it was just in case I needed it.

But, this is where the night took a desperate turn for the worst. I was not prepared at all for the complexity of events that followed.

We drove to a coffee shop that was nearby, but one that I had never been in before. As we walked in, I looked at the menu board behind the counter and thought it looked like an inventory list for one of those home improvement stores! There were latts, cappuccinos, frappuccinos, expressos, and macchiatos; chilled, iced, and frosted coffees; vanilla, caramel, mocha, hazelnut; dark roast, light roast, decaf, and regular ~ more coffees than I had ever imagined! Even the sizes weren't familiar to me anymore: tall, grande, and venti. These weren't even in English, were they? Whatever happened to small, medium, and large? Didn't that just about cover all the options?

Anyway, Nancy stepped up to the counter like a pro and ordered an iced cappuccino with a caramel drizzle, an addshot of expresso, topped with

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