A different culture

After a very long day yesterday, I found myself standing in a Star*ucks this morning at 6:50.  What should have been me being in and out to pick up some coffee wound up with me standing around where you order and get your drinks and food.  I know of Star*ucks, but prior to this morning I don't think I had ever spent more than a couple of minutes in one.

I decided it was a different culture.  Everyone (but me) seemed what to do and the language to speak.  If the line was long, you told your drink order to the lady making drinks.  Most of these orders were 6 to 7 words long it seemed to get one cup of specialized coffee.  They seemed to make things more complicated than needed.  There were not small, medium, and large for size.  But tall, grande, and viente.  Not just cream and sugar.  But skinny, soy, and I think some other things.  The baked goods seemed more straightforward.  I think I could have ordered myself something, if I could eat any of them.  Even if I drank coffee, I don't think I could order a cup of it.  Or maybe I could because I would have some sort of idea of what all of the choices mean.  I typical order water.  I like drinking tea at home.  Even with that, there are a couple of teas I like.  I'm not for all sorts of options.

As I was trying to figure out what the heck people were ordering (to kill the time, and in case I'm ever in need to go to one of these places and order something to be social.  Not a huge Chai Tea fan either.  I did see they had bottle water, and that is probably what I would get), I was listening to the workers talk.  There was the manager who looked to be in her late 20's to early 30's.  A woman being trained who looked to be in her 40's.  And two women in their early 20's.  The two younger women were out working the front several times by themselves during lulls and their conversation was enlightening interesting.  The one is about to turn 25, the other one "has a couple of years" before she turns 25.  The one whose birthday is approaching was talking about how she is having a mid life crisis because she is about to turn 25.  The other talked about fearing turning 25.  They talked about the manager who was "so mature" for her age so when she turned 25 "a while ago" it was not a big deal.  The manager had apparently "gone through some tough things".  This got me thinking about when I turned 25 and what I was doing.  It took some thinking to figure out what I was doing shortly before my 25th birthday and what I did the year I was 25.  My 25th birthday was nothing I pondered too deeply.  I had got engaged 2 weeks prior to it but it was not some major milestone.  I had no idea my world was going to come crashing in on me the day before my 26th birthday.  Essentially from after my honeymoon on, I had seen the writing on the wall that my life was entering a trying and defining time but I had not known what the bottom was going to be.  The day before my 26th birthday I knew what 1/2 of it was, 2 days after my birthday what I anticipated (correctly) to be rock bottom to be was confirmed.  I just didn't know when it was going to happen.  I didn't know that there were going to be 3 other significant deaths prior to in the intervening 10 months.  It was after this thought I started to listen to the ladies talk again.   There "midlife crisis" over turning 25 involved hard classes in school, and dating the same guy for more than a year.  Maybe getting their nose pierced.  I sighed.  How I wish those were my worries the year I was 25.  I then wished that their worries remain their largest worries for the year.  The next time one of them talked to me, she initially called me "Miss" then corrected herself to "Ma'am".  Typically I think of "ma'am" being someone older or military (when I was a commissioned officer's wife, this is how I was routinely addressed), almost something to be offended from being changed from a "miss" to a "ma'am".  Something old fashioned about it.  Then the thought flashed through my head, I guess in their eyes, in there culture where I couldn't even order a drink in a coordinated manner where what would cause a "midlife crisis" for me is so entirely different than theirs, I guess I am of an older generation despite less than a decade of difference in age.