Caffeine Fix

It’s about four o’ clock on a Saturday evening and there is activity going on all around me. I hear the bustle of a waitress as she scrambles to fill orders of patient customers on the other side of the cash register. Within the first hour of my stay, the foot traffic going in and out of the decent sized coffee shop stays at a consistent level of calmness. As time goes on, there are less and less people there.

There is one family that is sitting across from the table that I occupy. The family is accompanied by four children all around elementary school ages. While the kids huddle around a table not too far away from their parents, the mother and father converse in a language that is native to me. The kids seem to be in their own little world, however, the oldest keeps going back and forth to check in with the parents. Whenever there are words exchanged between the little girl and her parents, it is in English. I cannot help but wonder why the parents do not speak to the kids in the same tongue that they were using to speak to each other.

Once the pastry that both her and her husband were sharing was finished, the wife pulls out her smart phone from her oversized purse ad begins to scroll down the newsfeed of what seemed to be a social media site. The father turns his attention towards his kids to see what they were up to.

A male and a female come through the doors side door of the shop with two little boys. The older male is wearing a Texas A&M shirt and so is one of the boys. The couple order several pastries and coffee for themselves before sitting down. The boys automatically begin to converse with the group of four kids around the table. They only stay for a very short time before they bustle out of the shop. Were they stopping by the shop before the tuned in to cheer their football team on?

After ordering a couple of pastries to go, the father of the four children lets his kids know that it is time to leave. The youngest looking child stays in her seat and begins to protest this action although the rest of her party is leaving. She stays for as long as she can until she realizes that they were not going to wait on her. She reluctantly gets out of the chair and follows the rest of the family outside of the coffee shop.

The other tables around me are being occupied by folks who I assume to be college students. The three young men wear what seems to me to be hipster style clothing. Each of them are facing each other with their eyes glued to their laptops. There are words being exchanged between the three people but I cannot hear them. I observe that one student, a male, seemed a little bored as the other two males are in tune to whatever they were doing on their laptops.

To my left, there is a girl around my age that is typing away on her laptop as well. She had headphones in both ears cancelling out the noise of the shop and replacing it with the music of her liking, she was very focused on what she was working on. Her brow was furrowed and her eyes focused on the words that were being formed with the tap of the keys on her keyboard. Papers littered the space around her computer. Highlighters and pens were scattered among them as well.

The main items being consumed at this time are hot beverages and pastries. The menu does offer more filling food items but they are not being ordered at this time. I received a very relaxed, easy going vibe from the coffee shop itself and its patrons.