Late Night Storms And Wednesday Morning Mulligans

Wednesday got off to a rough start.  Because Zeus and Poseidon were apparently attempting to settle a bet via what I can only assume was a raucous bowling match in the heavens above my house last night, I found myself conspicuously not asleep at 2:30 this morning. As a result, I slept through my alarm and woke up 10 minutes late.  Admittedly, that isn’t quite something you blame on the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse, but still, it prompted me to hurry my poor, barely-been-a-middle-schooler-for-week out of the house to the slightly-early-and-waiting Middle School bus with only one shoe tied and while attempting to squeeze his new Texas-sized Middle School binder into his Middle School backpack mid-stride and also end up not tripping over his own shoelaces in the driveway. I mean, let’s be honest, having to get on the earliest bus is bad enough, but going face-down on the pavement in an explosion of folders, papers, and school supplies for all the Middle Schools bus riders’ early morning entertainment is the pre-teen equivalent of getting hot pokers to the fingernails.

Luckily, Oldest Son avoided such ignominy.  Which is good, because nobody really wanted him to have to change schools.

If sling-shotting my poor, slightly unprepared 6th grader out the door this morning had been the end of my questionable morning, I could find a way to live with it. After all, kids are resilient and an Icee cures most early-morning problems. But then I proceeded to bust a button off my work pants, and race out the door myself while forgetting my lunch as well as the cottage cheese that was theoretically going to be part of my breakfast.

Thinking that maybe a few belts of iced coffee might brighten my day (or at least fortify me against further AM hijinks), I stopped to get coffee. That’s when I realized I’d made the classic Wednesday Morning Coffee Shop Blunder. The place was overrun with what I can only assume were high school freshman.  I’m pretty sure somebody’s English teacher forgot to finish up that lesson plan the night before because, I don’t know, The Big Brother finale was on, so he sent the kids out for an offsite study hall. Unfortunately for me, the site, of course, was my provider of live-affirming caffeinated beverages, and if you’ve ever seen 9th graders in a coffee shop, you know that each and every last one of them Must. Order. The. Frozen. Blendy. Drink.

Or, as I like to call them, The Icy Mochas Of Stagnant Time.

Seriously, it takes the poor barista roughly seven hours to make each one. In fact, if you close your eyes, I’m pretty sure you can feel them thinking if I’d wanted to make milkshakes, I’d have gotten a job at Baskin Robbins.

That said, for those of you not familiar with the consequences of 20+ teens ordering iced blended concoctions at one time, what happens is that your average coffee drinking patron—you know, those of us who have jobs that come with employers that would rather we weren’t participating in class at the coffee shop—becomes semi-permanently trapped in a void pocket of space-time where centuries stretch out before you eyes, unmoving, unchanging, and filled with nothing but cold, frozen, mocha-colored emptiness.

When I finally left the coffee shop, then, I took a moment to breathe, sip my iced Americano, and relax.

At which point, I did what any normal modern person would do, I whipped out my iPhone and proceeded to share my terrible, horrible, no good, very long morning with twitter and Facebook.

I’d like to use my weekly mulligan on this morning, please? #fb

— Jason A. Rust (@jasonarust) August 20, 2014

For the record, no I never did get to use that Mulligan. But at least the coffee turned out okay.

Pud’n