The Cobbler Part II: Lord Preserve Me and My Faint Heart

After leaving the store with a successful flirtation feather in my cap, I called Sprinkle on the way home. My recap was long and glowing, but she was only interested in one thing. A name. She tried to goad my memory. I was pretty certain his first name began with a B and the last name began with an M. Brendan Monocle. Brent McGrady. Bo Metcalf. I had no idea, and so Sprinkle’s considerable Internet PI skills went unused unfortunately.

I polled everyone I knew about how long to wait before going back and whether or not to just give the Cobbler my number or ask for his. The general consensus was that it was much easier to just include my number in with some sweets. One dissenting voice cautioned that if a guy was actually interested, he would ask for my number and to just give the sweets alone and see what he did. But it was one among a chorus saying, “Go for it, Buttercup! You got this girl.”

So a week later, at the end of one of my shifts, I baked a gorgeous orange-blueberry scone, wrapped it up nice and masculine, and wrote a card with some help: "Enjoy the scone! Next time, give me a call and we'll share one over coffee. -Buttercup Harding, my-dig-its"

With my heart in my throat and my bestie, Sprinkle, on standby in case I threw up out of nerves all over my crush when he let me down gently, I was ready to deliver my scone, complete with my number. On advice from my brother, I left my insoles for returning in the car. (The Cobbler was right: the Keens had broken in nicely. Not leather stocking nicely, but enough not to be hobbled with pain.) Brother suggested that returning the merchandise might send mixed messages, and if I was going to go through with this, I might as well commit. 

I do a walk by, and he's not there. I do another lap. Totally not there.

Well, I'll be damned if I'm going to drive all the way to the mall for no reason. I go out to the car and switch my scone for the insoles, go back in, and make the return. I call Sprinkle on my way back out to the car, filling her in on the disappointment. I would just have to come back the next morning to give it to him I tell her as I slide into my car and CRUNCH. 

I had sat on the scone. I sat on my baked heart.

The box and card were totally crumpled, but the scone was fine. At the first sound of destruction, I had jumped back out of the car like my bottom was on fire, so I guess that saved the baked good. I determined to buy a new box and just take it to him again in the morning. I was pretty sure he worked Mondays. [Not at all stalkerish to know a stranger’s schedule because you visit him at work so often—unsolicited.]

Monday morning dawned bright and brisk. I had forgotten to buy a new box for the scone. And what if it was stale? I hadn’t even bothered storing it correctly when I got home. This really worried me. I couldn’t give him a stale symbol of my affection.

After staring at the scone, willing it to give me some sign of freshness, I finally pinched off a corner to taste. The problem with this is twofold: 1) a tiny taste cannot convey freshness or staleness, and 2) IT WAS TOTALLY OBVIOUSLY MISSING A CORNER. So, I had to eat it all. It wasn’t stale. It was delicious.

Luckily my 3:00 am to 11:00 am bakery job meant that even on my day off I woke well before the mall opened. And, in the end, I think the scone debacle was a godsend because if I hadn’t had to bake something else that morning, I would have probably had some sort of mental episode from having to wait without any distractions.

I decided to make bite-sized chocolate chip cookies that are delicious—no lie. And, because they’re so tiny, the recipe makes about a million. So I dumped 5 dozen tiny cookies into a brown paper bag (like a lunch bag) and tied it with twine (so manly), and after a lot of mental back and forth, decided not to include my number.

The drive to the mall was torture. I was sweating profusely. My face was flushed, and as I walked through Dillard’s, several of the sales associates gave me worried looks. I probably looked like an alcoholic or substance abuser of some kind, which, as I emerged from Dillard’s into the open walkway of the mall, I realized they must be pretty used to on a Monday because it was filled with meth heads. You know their meth heads because of all the teeth they don’t have. There is also something in the air of how they carry themselves and wear their acid washed jeans.

Of course, it’s also possible that the sales associates now recognized me from my frequent visits and were concerned that I was going to have my heart broken by that rakish shoes salesman. Or there was a mall rumor about me being a stalker.

I made a beeline for the shoe store. He’s there. The Cobbler. He was helping a customer, but when I walked in he smiled and waved before attending to his customer’s requests. There was another sales associate there who looked exactly like the young long-haired drummer from the band Glen Hansard hires in Once. I expected when he opened his mouth that he would have an Irish brogue.

“Is there something you’re looking for?”

I had been lurking around the sales section, waiting for the Cobbler to wrap it up with the most indecisive male shopper ever. The Cobbler would occasionally look over with a smile or a wink (a wink! There are some people who think the wink is cheesy or weird. I personally love winks all the way from my delightedly flushed cheeks to my curled toes). This kept me hanging on despite all my nerves shouting, “Get out of here before you make a fool of yourself!” But no way, baby. I was committing to this foolhardiness.

“Nope,” I told the disappointingly American boy. “Just looking at the sales rack. Those Brooks?”

We talked shoe small talk until it became apparent that if I didn’t want to make a total ass out of myself, I would have to try some on. Not Irish Boy went to the back to check for my size, and the Cobbler came over to chat while his customer was walking around the store in yet another pair of shoes.

“Well. I’ve got bad news.”

“You do? What’s that? The number of meth addicts who shop at this mall?”

He blinked at me. “What?”

“Have you seen the people walking around?”

He looked out the store’s open doors just as Billy Jean and Billy Bob rounded the corner for the tenth time (I swear—I was keeping count while I was waiting).

“Yeah, I guess there are some pretty weird people here this time of day during the week.”

“Not a whole lot of teeth happening.”

He laughed. Hard. I beamed.

His customer asked for a different size or something, and the Not Irish Boy came back to tell me he didn’t have my size in the Brooks. So I thought screw it. I’ll come back later. I needed a curtain rod for the blackout curtains I had bought since I had to go to bed at 6 p.m. every night. Living. The. Dream. I’d just run down to some department stores, check out what they had going on, and come back in 30 minutes or something. Surely that would be enough time for the gentleman to make up his mind. There was no way in hell I was giving my bag full of cookies to the Cobbler in front of a customer. Dear Lord in heaven preserve me and my faint heart.

“You’re not leaving are you?”

I turned around at the door. “I’ll be back to chat. I have something else I need to do while I’m here.”

As I sashayed my way down to Penny’s, weaving in between tweakers, I glowed with womanly self-assurance. I mean, you can’t hear the wounded pleading in his voice—but it was there. That man was in love with me. This was going to be cake. I texted Sprinkle an updated while I dinked around. Bought a curtain rod. Tried on clothes I had no intention of buying. Browsed Claire’s because kids these days. Browsed Hot Topic because goths these days. Went back by the shoe store—and the customer was still there! It had to have been at least 30 minutes since I had left. I had waited 30 minutes in the store. And he had been there when I got there. Who knows how long he had been “shopping.” And this is not a big shoe store. Was he trying on every size in every shoe? What on earth?

I kept right on walking back to Dillard’s. Bought a blanket because when do you ever not need a soft blanket? And took all my purchases to my car. Having a mall crush is expensive, people. If for no other reason, don’t do it to preserve your folding money.

So at this point it had to have been at least almost an hour since I left the store. I walk by, and yes, the customer is gone. The Cobbler is sitting on the floor doing inventory. Not Irish Boy looks up and says, “Hey, Travis [aside: I actually don’t remember his name, but I know it absolutely did not start with a B], look who’s here.”

This causes my heart to lurch painfully. What did that mean? “Look who’s here?” Was that knowing tone because the Cobbler had thought I’d left and told this neo-hippy that he was bummed we hadn’t gotten to talk, that he loved me and wanted nothing more than to confess his love? Or did it mean, “Hey, look. Your stalker’s back”? What did the Dillard's sales associates know? What had their looks meant?!

[Next Tuesday will be the third and final installment of The Cobbler series where I might actually get somewhere with this guy...]

You've Been James Robinsoned

I’m supposed to be working on The Business Plan right now, but I’ve been working on it all day and think for my general mental health that I should take a break and write a blog about it instead. Well, it and what else is going on in my life and see if anyone can relate.

As an update from my last post, I have not talked to my brother directly about the coffee house because a) I’m yellow as a chicken, and b) I’ve taken the safer and, I’ve convinced myself, more effective route of short, direct questions. Example: What have you done today? Is the menu done? Why not? I follow this up with the list of things I have been working on/accomplished. It seems to be working. He’s done a bunch more research of his own volition and done pricing and we have a sandwich menu! And he finished the advertising and marketing plan. I'll post our entire menu once I've finished the soup/salad portion (now whose butt isn't in gear?).

Of course, he’s also understandably disgruntled (one might even guess as disgruntled as he would be if I would just man up and have the dream/momentum/feelings conversation with him) every time I use this new tactic on him. But all I care about is results. Who cares if I’m creating an unhealthy pattern of interaction for the future business partnership? Right.

Since I’m practically out of money, I’ve been concentrating all my efforts into finalizing the business plan—the one thing that doesn’t earn me any money. It’s an investment in a future job that might not ever materialize. Right. My logic is that if I can just get that pretty much done, then I can go get a job(s) and when/if we finally do find a location, it’s ready to go and I don’t have to stress about it while I’m working full time.

We go on a walkthrough of a location in the Plaza tomorrow. I’m pretty excited to see inside the building and hear what an architect/contractor has to say about the space. I’m a visual person, and seeing a location where I can visualize the coffee shop will go a long way toward curbing my anxiety and hopefully revitalizing my enthusiasm.

In other news,

>I have visited a church twice and managed to talk to only one person total (the pastor made a beeline for me upon my second visit)

>I went with an acquaintance who I hope will become a friend to an unexpectedly awesome (I expected good) show in Norman (The Wurly Birds and Deer People)

>I made some pretty cool animal broaches

>I finished Will Grayson Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan and began Anna Karenina by Tolstoy

>Grant convinced me to join D&D (I’m a fox Hengeyokai rogue [scoundrel version]) (i.e., nerd badass)

>I volunteered at the Plaza Festival, which was practically rained out but not a total bust because, boy, did I meet a character!

James Robinson is the character of which I speak, and once I have a moment to sit down and really write (as opposed to blog), y’all are going to hear all about him. He’s going to end up in my gypsy books. He has to. His long, pointed fingernails and beard balls demand it.

Until then, fill me in what weird hobbies/adventures you’ve been getting tangled up in! Normal’s for the birds.

Deer People, Read My Blog

Surprise! I do still write and think and ponder and expostulate. On occasion anyway. I’ve started several blog posts and then haven’t finished them due to a lack of inspiration. I read back over, think “So what?” and can’t answer the question. Soooo…I don’t bore you with them. But I’ve known for a while now that I wanted to write a post about nature. That sounds so boring though, doesn’t it?

Not so! I find, as many of my literary predecessors have, inspiration from nature. I also find fear. Many of you have heard about my scorpion sting. I will not go into detail here so as not to ever in any way relive the experience. But pain isn’t the only danger in nature. There are also deer, people.

It began…well it began a long, long time ago, I suppose, whenever a developer first decided to develop land north-east of Edmond proper, surrounded by forested plots of land, grazing cattle, and crops. The forested area chosen by the developer was cleared one acre at a time, leaving plenty of leafy coverage between houses so that privacy could be preserved. Because of this, the deer never moved out.

The past two years have been extremely hot. Grass has died, and the only green oases in Oklahoma are well-watered lawns. Enter the deer, in herds. The previous year was perfectly pastoral on our parcel of land with does and their fawns crossing the street at twilight, posing in our lawn in the morning hours, or even sometimes bedding down on the springy bed of grass outside our windows. If I was in the car and saw them close enough to the street, I would stop and roll down my window for a friendly exchange.

“Hey, deer! What a pretty fawn you have. The sweetest! Don’t mind my dogs if they bark at you. They wouldn’t know what to do with you if they caught you. No threat at all. Oh. You’re going? Oh, okay. I understand. Goodbye! Goodbye, deer!”

It was nice. But this summer, something has changed. Last month was the first episode. I was taking out the garbage, easing out my door backward so that the dogs wouldn’t slip past me. I turned and gasped. More of a suppressed scream. Not twenty paces away stood a deer. I dropped the garbage and hopped back in doors. The dogs cocked their heads to the side, silently asking me if I’d lost my bloomin’ mind. “There’s a deer outside!” I told them so that they wouldn’t think I was crazy.

I peeked back out the blinds. It was gone. I could go back outside.

Now, I ask you, why was this seemingly irrational response my gut reaction? Why did I feel as if I needed to go back inside and hide from a deer? Why did I peek outside, checking to make sure it had left and was safe for me to go outside again? Silly. And that’s what I told myself.

But that wasn’t the last encounter. The deer continued to frequent our lawn, encroaching on our house. I dismissed my nerves as an overactive imagination due to lack of stimulation. (Sitting in your house and working/crafting all day can lead to a Rear Window mentality.)

Last week I was walking my dogs late at night, as has become my custom every evening. It must have been around 11 o’clock. I usually walk them after Conan. It was Jasper’s turn, and as we drew close to the forested lot next door to our house, he stopped and perked his ears. Out walked five deer, crossing the road to a neighbor’s lawn in single file beneath one of two streetlights in our neighborhood. It was beautiful. It was what the transcendentalists wrote about in their sublime poetry.

I sat down where I was in the lawn. Jasper watched, alert. All at once he let out a mighty bay. I hushed him, and he sat docilely on my feet (not at my feet, on my feet). Too late. The deer were alerted to our presence. It was the oddest thing, though. They didn’t run. They stared. We—the deer, Jasper, and I—stared at one another what felt like minutes. And then the deer directly below the light yelled at us. There is no other word for it. It opened its deer mouth and emitted a loud noise meant to scare/chastise/in someway harm us. It did this for a while.

Jasper and I continued staring, transfixed by the horrible noise shattering our sublime moment. When we didn’t die/leave, the deer (collectively) turned and ambled out into the darkness. I was spooked. I told my family. They didn’t believe me. This confirmed my suspicion that I was now living a horror story with deer casted as my personal Freddy Krueger, or maybe they’re my birds. Yet to be determined, I suppose. One day they’ll either stand up on their back legs, shed their front hooves, and shiv me with their revealed deer hands… Or they’ll sprout wings and dive-bomb me. Which, let’s face it, is a lot more harmful and scary than Alfred’s Birds.

I continue to walk at night, comforted by my dog’s presence. Each one gets a turn about the yard, and each one has his good points. Jasper has heft and a deep bellow that’s good for scaring away critters and people. Buckley makes noises scarier than that deer, and he’s a killer. I’ve only seen him kill rabbits, but I bet he’d give a deer the ol’ college try should one attack me.

The dogs, however, have only kept the deer at bay, at the perimeters of sight, hidden in the country darkness that I used to find comforting. As I’m walking, I scan my surrounding, finding peace in the stars and beauty of the moon. Taking comfort in the importance of the armadillo’s mad digging. Smiling at the opossum waddling across the street in the moonlight, sometimes with little ones in tow. And then I’ll catch a flash, something reflecting the moonlight. I’ll move my head in increments so that I can spot it again. Two eyes, staring at me. Not close to the ground like coyotes, who are actually quite the scaredy cats. Higher. About the height of deer. And then I can make out the deer shape, and more deer around it grazing. Slowly they’ll raise their heads, eyes shining in the night as they stare at me.

Are you scared yet? Join my nightmare. In rebellion of the fear they’re trying to cage me with, I’m going to see Deer People tomorrow night at the conservatory. You should come, it’s going to be an awesome show. Their music is something everyone could (should) enjoy, and you’d be supporting a local band. Check them out: http://okc.net/2012/09/06/deerpeople-happy-fun-time/

The True Confessions of Buttercup Harding

Yesterday, Turner Classic Movies had an “adventure on the high seas” movie marathon—aka, pirate movies. Thank goodness the boring business of working with spreadsheets can be done while watching television! These adventures gave me a thirst to read a nautical tale. One packed with suspense and adventure. One that I could immerse myself in, become part of the story.

Enter The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. This Newberry winner, written by Avi, was required reading when I was in the fifth or sixth grade. I can’t remember which. But I can remember my overwhelming desire to hie off and join a ship’s crew. My parents should be thanking God that Oklahoma is landlocked.

Around the same time I first read that book, my family took a month-long road trip to hit all of the national parks west of the Mississippi. At the end of our journey, we visited Alcatraz, the United State’s most high security prison. Since its heyday during the Prohibition era, it has been transformed into a museum that tourists like my family can visit. My mother, being the dedicated lifelong learner that she is, insisted we all listen to the audio tour, not just wander through.

From the moment I placed those headphones over my ear holes, I was enthralled. The narrator had a History Channel-worthy voice. But even if the inflection and tone had been lacking, the ambiance noise in the background would have been enough to submerge me in that world. It changed from the clanking and cries of seagulls on the dock to the whispers of men in their cells to the shouts of violence in the mess hall.

As I walked the halls of Alcatraz, peering into the men’s cells that still had their effects on display, I imagined myself there, cutting hair in the barber shop, shanking any who dared threaten me in the cafeteria, attempting escapes with the inmates. I was thirteen years old. I wanted to be a forty-year-old mob boss. Felony is exciting!

While these youthful aspirations are—well I find them endearing. Others have told me that they’re weird. Apparently girls shouldn’t want to be Al Capone when they grow up with the sole goal of being thrown into prison. While I find them endearing, they’re more farfetched than the average ballerina or fireman dreams. The truth is that I would never be able to climb rigging without a) hanging myself, b) falling to my death, or c) vomiting myself to death from motion sickness. And as for being a felon…I’m a good girl! I just don’t have what it takes to be convicted. But oh, once I was there, in prison, I could be an awesome inmate. The best inmate. Which would basically mean I would get out on good behavior before I ever had the chance to attempt an escape.

But still the thirst for adventure chases me. Usually I’m fully content to live in Oklahoma. I love, love, love, love Oklahoma. I have seen the world. I have been to big cities and small all over our country and ten others. I have been on four of the seven continents. So anyone who considers themselves learn-ed and wants to correct my backward love of my state, they can stuff it. I don’t scorn your love of NYC or London or Tokyo (or wherever it is that you want to make your real home). So don’t scorn mine.

There are problems with Oklahoma, though. I will grant you that. For instance, adventure. What am I to do for adventure? Noodling just doesn’t do it for me. Nor does cow tipping, paintballing, or camping in the Ouachitas or the Ozarks. When I want adventure, a change in routine isn’t enough. It’s more than a need for adrenaline, too. I want danger. Not senseless danger, like sky diving. I want logical danger like mobsters or being on the wrong side of the law or sailing on the open sea.

So I have to ask myself, since my daydreams are so totally improbable, what is at the root of this thirst for big adventure? After staying up till four a.m. reading The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle, I have a theory. What I yearn for isn’t just adventure. It’s that big life-changing event: mutiny on my ship, falling into crime, battling gross injustices, surviving a near-fatality. It’s experiencing something bigger than life, bigger than myself, and being changed because of it. That’s why simple adventures: travel, starting a business, going to a peach festival, noodling, etc., don’t satisfy that thirst.

The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle ends with thirteen-year-old Charlotte unable or unwilling to be reabsorbed into her well-bred family after her two-month adventure on the sea. She’s changed too much. The last sentence of the book reads,

Something Zachariah told me filled my mind and excited my heart: “A sailor,” he said, “chooses the wind that takes the ship from safe port…but winds have a mind of their own.”

According to my theory, I want to choose that wind, and then fly before it, whether I head toward storm or fair skies. As long as I’m pointed toward the open horizon, it doesn’t matter to me. The adventure is in the not knowing. It’s in the bigness, grandness, and uncertainty of the journey, and especially the unknown destination.

If you know me very well or have been reading this blog, you’ll understand how paradoxical that is. I sometimes throw little temper tantrums (luckily my dogs are usually the only witnesses) when writing a business plan becomes overwhelming. Or when I don’t know who to call to get a particular answer. Or when I begin feeling the pinch of my shrinking savings account. Or something as tiny as the brand of dog food I buy being moved somewhere else in the store. Clearly, I don’t like the unknown. In fact, not knowing is my least favorite thing. It makes me feel vulnerable and stupid. I deplore feeling stupid. It gives me heart palpitations when I feel out of my element. The kind of adventure I want to chase is entirely about being out of my element!

So what? Am I crazy? My opinion might lack objectivity, but no, I don’t think I’m crazy. Or at least not for this. There are several basic human aspirations at play here. 1) The desire to do something bigger than yourself. Leave a mark on others, or, if you’re the right person at the right time and place, leave a mark on history. 2) The need to escape the responsibilities of your current life. I think psychologists would back me up on this. At one time or another, every person has dreamed, what if? 3) The even more basic, deep-seeded craving to give up control.

There’s this simultaneous need in human beings to be in control and the wish to give up all control. It’s tiring, isn’t it, trying to control every aspect of your life? We’re all a bit OCD on the inside. We believe if we can just choose our friends and choose our profession and choose our partner that we will have a good life. If we could see into the future, we would pick the right path when we came to a fork in the road.

But that’s a lot of responsibility! And it also is disproved day after day. Your partner cheats on you, a parent dies, you get fired, or you end up hating what you chose to do for a living. When things like this go awry, our need for control is aggravated. We go on overdrive, attempting to control everything and every one. All we want, deep down, is to give up control. It’s too much to do to control every little thing. And we keep messing stuff up. It gets worse, and we just want Mom or Dad to come pick us up and clean up our mess. Our grip on our lives is so tight, though, that it is painful, so, so, so painful, to pry our fingers loose. That pain reinforces the belief that we not only want to be in control but we need to be in control in order to avoid pain and failure.

And then I have a day like yesterday, when all I want to do is stand up and walk out, driven by a wind of my choosing with an unknown path and destination. I want to experience big things I have no control over. I feel I can be the right person at the right time and place—if I just let go. If I stop trying to control my life, narrowing it down and boxing it in to something manageable (because really, how much can any one person control? I can’t even control myself!), then my life could be epic! And that’s what I want for myself. Epicness.

Do you ever feel this way? What is your what if daydream? 

The Cupping: Yet Another Small Business Harrowing Tale

Meeting with suppliers can be never wracking. These are people you will potentially be in business for a long, long time. You want to impress them. You also want to seem knowledgeable in your chosen industry. I assume that it isn’t just me who feels this way. But I do have to acknowledge that as a fledgling entrepreneur who has chosen an industry (coffee) that she is particularly ignorant about, this feeling of nerve-wrackingness might be more acute in my case. What’s worse, I didn’t have time to fully prepare.

Here’s how it all came about:

About a month ago, someone I barely know gave me a card with a man’s name and cell number. It was not his business card. It was his card for the shelter he volunteers at (because that’s how this practical stranger [to me] knows him). He works at a coffee roaster. One that my brother and I were keen on. So, a couple of weeks later, while staring dejectedly at his cell number, I made up my mind to call. But I was not going to call his cell. How inappropriate would that be? Instead I called the roaster and asked for him. They told me that no one by that name worked there. Awesome. Off to a good start.

“Okay,” I said. “Let me start over. I’m opening a coffee house—”

“That sounds right,” he said. There was laughter in his voice.

“Or trying to anyway, in Oklahoma City. And I’m interested in using you as a supplier. Can I set up a cupping/tour/meetings or whatever…”

I didn’t even take a breath. Just kept right on talking. And I sounded so professional. Clearly. He said sure but that he’d have to check around and see when they could get me in. He’d call me back.

They never called me back.

That was okay, though, because the very next week my brother and I met with lots of professional people and had more of a handle on where we were. Our business’s legal structure was officially formed and filed: LLC! We got an EIN. We were filling in spreadsheets with numbers. And I had even more questions to ask the suppliers when I met with them.

So at the beginning of this week, I resolved to try talking to the supplier—try 2. I was going to be professional and brave. I was going to cold call this man’s cell phone. Monday and Tuesday and most of Wednesday I was mustering up my courage and busying myself with other small tasks so as to avoid this distasteful one. I’m not afraid to talk on the phone. I didn’t hesitate to call the roaster. But this was someone’s cell phone!

Wednesday, at four o’clock, in the parking lot of Wal-Mart (don’t ask), I finally committed the deed. I dialed his number. A deep, deep voice answered.

“Hi. Is this So-and-So?” I asked

“Yes…?”

“My name is B— H—”

“Hi.”

“Yeah and Mutual Acquaintance gave me your number—”

“Okay. It’s nice to meet you.”
I really wanted him to stop interrupting me. I was trying to get it all out in one gasp of breath! And right now it sounded like Mutual had set us up for a date or something. Which I didn’t even think about until just that minute. That he might think that. Son of a gun.

“Because I’m trying to open a coffee house. With my brother—”

“Uh-huh.”

“And Mutual mentioned Topeca and we are interested in using them as a supplier. She told me you work there.”

“Oh, yeah. Yeah, I do.” Understanding had dawned on him in bright, warm, fuzzy awareness.

“I’m going to be in Tulsa this weekend. Do you think I could meet with you or someone up there sometime Thursday or Friday? If not I could set up another time. I know it’s a bit last minute.”

“No, yeah. That’s cool. Let me call and set up a time and I’ll call you back.”

I’d heard that before.

But no, he did call me back, and we set the time for ten a.m. In Tulsa. Two hours away. That meant I had to leave the house before eight so I had time to get lost. Which meant getting up at six. And I needed to get all my questions in one place. And study up on cupping. Oh God. Why had I thought I was ready for a cupping? There wasn’t enough time to do a practice! Oh jeez, oh jeez, oh jeez.

Oh jeez pretty much repeated nonstop in my head until I was finished with the meeting at noon the next day. I called my Tulsa friend, Sprinkle, and she insisted I come up that night so that I’d have more time in the morning and we could do a drive-by of the roaster. I have a tendency to get lost and then absolutely lose my mind. I start sweating and foaming at the mouth. I call people in a blind panic and yell about how lost I am. And when they try to talk in calm soothing noises, I yell over them, sometimes not even in coherent words. Just garbled dread.

I agreed to drive up in order to avoid getting lost. But that meant I didn’t have time that night to get ready, because I would be driving two hours. And I had to pack/clean before I left. And get dog food because I forgot I was out and got to Petco a mere eight minutes before it closed and then couldn’t find my dog’s brand of food which is when I began sweating and foaming at the mouth and talking to myself in the aisles as the Petco employees attempted tidy up around me and not-so-subtly suggest I make like a tree and leave. So I got to Tulsa at midnight and crashed. Except not really because I tossed and turned and worried about the cupping. In fact I woke Sprinkle up more than once asking unanswerable questions like, “What if I can’t taste the difference between the coffees? What will happen to me?”

  

We woke up at six in the a.m. Sprinkle had class. We got up, I tried on outfits while she tried to decide which one was appropriate for a supplier meeting, got dressed, got breakfast, did our drive-by, I dropped her off at school, went back to the apartment, and panicked. I turned on Youtube videos of cupping and wrote questions for the supplier out like a madwoman. After an hour, which was all I had to prepare before my ten a.m. meeting, I had three pages of notes and butterflies in my stomach. And sweaty palms.

When I got there, the door was locked. I jiggled it. I peered in. Jiggled it some more. Checked my watch. Jiggle. And then resignedly walked toward the alleyway where the back door resided (it was the instructions I was given). But a man opened the door just in time. He was tall. I was too nervous at this point to look at his face. It was hot outside and I was sweating like a pig when I walked in the door.

“Good morning! I’m at the roaster, right? I found the right address.” I looked up into his face inquiringly for the first time.

He looked confused. Awesome. “Yes, yes, this is the roaster.”

“My name is Kalyn McAlister. I’m supposed to have a ten o’clock cupping and tour?”

He just smiled kindly, as if waiting for me to finish. I had finished.

“Uhm…I’m supposed to be meeting with Bob…”

His face lit up and he held out his hand for me to shake. My palms were sweaty, but I put ‘em there anyway. “Well, that’s me. Welcome to Coffee Roaster.” He looked around again in confusion. “Tell me again who you’re with.”

“My name’s Kalyn McAlister and I’m with Trade Café.”

“Oh yes, yes. So-and-So called and told me yesterday. That’s right.”

I followed him to the back of the building. It wasn’t a cavernous warehouse. Sort of small and intimate, actually. But with lofty ceilings and bags of coffee beans everywhere. The noise of the roasters were loud. It was a comfortable industrial ambiance. And I was trying to make myself relax. I wanted to appear confident. Bob had happy eyes with long crow’s feet spidering out across and down his temples. I hoped he was the sort that laughed with and not at…because there was next to no chance I would make it out of this rite of passage without a misstep.

I had watched four Youtube videos about cupping—all by the same person, which was probably a mistake—before I showed up at the roaster. The videos concentrated on taste, and he used sensations such as sweet, salty, and sour, basing the “flavor” or characteristics of the coffee on the taste buds they aroused. He didn’t talk about smelling the coffee. This would be what I considered my downfall.

Bob set up the coffee, grinding it as I watched, and tried to carry on a conversation. He was endearingly incapable of completing a sentence while doing something with his hands. Cupping requires preciseness from the roaster. Each coffee has two cups that have to be measured to the ounce so that the flavor is as similar as possible. That’s down to the bean in weight. Two cups for each coffee in case there’s a bad bean in the mix. It’s to ensure consistency across the two cups, but also, if there happened to be a bad bean, you’d have one good cup and one…off cup.

About halfway through, someone else came over to do the measuring and grinding for Bob. He sat down and told me about varietals and whatnot. This coffee roaster is a seed-to-cup organization. The farm owners in El Salvador own and opened the roaster in Tulsa, which supplies out to cafés. They also have their own cafés. That allows them to pay themselves fair prices (the ultimate in fair trade!) but also have absolute control over the quality of their coffees. That’s why they’re so scrumptious. And so fanatical about coffee. I was intimidated.

Once the grinding was complete, Bob stood up and moved down the row of six coffees, shaking each cup and smelling it. He explained what he wanted me to do. And then he diagrammed it for me with a silly looking drawing. I was delighted. As he went back to smelling coffees, I giggled over the drawing. He had to tell me to begin smelling. As I worked my way down the line, he described what he smelled. I nodded and made assenting noises. After I’d finished he stood waiting. It was clear he was waiting because his hands were on his hips and he had a focused, expectant look on his face. Which was turned my direction. My stellar response? “…Yup. They smell good.”

…

…

His underwhelmedness was interrupted by the dinging of the water. He moved down the line, pouring an even amount of water over the coarsely ground coffee beans. I said something about it being similar to Turkish coffee. He corrected me. I got sad. He didn’t notice because he was focused on the coffee. A timer was running so he could keep tabs on the brewing. Again, we went down the line and smelled the coffee. There wasn’t much differentiation in aroma. There was a marked different in the coffee grounds. But after the hot water was added, I’d lost the scent. He told me to breath like a dog.

After thinking about this for a minute, I decided he meant pant like a dog. So I opened my mouth slightly, and attempted to breathe in and out of both my nose and mouth simultaneously. I made it through half of the coffees before he finished, looked over at me, and must have been just flabbergasted. Very kindly, considering the fact that I must have looked like a dumb mouth breather, he stopped me and showed me what he meant. His nostrils flared in and out quickly, like a dog smelling something. Which makes much more sense than a dog panting, doesn’t it?

After a few minutes, he went down the line and broke the crust for both of us. This pushes the coffee grounds to the bottom of the cup with a spoon, and then he stirs backwards once and normally twice. I take this to mean that he stirred counterclockwise once and then clockwise twice. But I didn’t watch as I should have, because I was too busy ruminating over how I looked when I was panting above the coffee. He was bent over the coffee as he stirred, smelling the heavenly brew. I followed closely behind, smelling like a dog. I could smell the difference in coffees once more.

A few more minutes go by before you taste it the first time. You wait another five to ten minutes, when the coffee is room temperature, and you taste it again. Hot coffee pretty much tastes like hot coffee, regardless of the bean/roast. But if your roaster knows how to cup properly, he pairs the coffees deliberately. Moving from a sweet to a salty or sour and back again. We started with a heavy bodied, sweet coffee. My favorite. I don’t care about the taste so much as I care about the body. I love something weighty on my tongue. This preference, I take it, is not appropriate in a coffee fanatic. As we moved down the line, I could taste the difference between the coffees, even when hot, because he chose the order very well.

We talked more about the coffees and how the business was set up as we waited for the cups to reach room temperature. We moved back through. I decided this was a good time to bust out some of the terminology I learned while watching my Youtube tutorials. I had totally bombed the smelling portion of the cupping. I was determined to get this part right. So when we reached what I considered thought must be a “salty” cup of coffee, I said, “Is this one salty? It seems soft on my palate.”

I looked at Bob expectantly, waiting for my gold star. All I got was a blank look.

“Well,” he said, moving to stand beside me and reaching for a spoon, “if you taste that it isn’t wrong. There’s no wrong way to taste.” He slurped the coffee noisily. I was jealous of his good slurping technique. He swished it around. Stared at the ceiling in thought. Visibly came to the decision that it was definitely not salty. And then said, “I taste brightness. Very simple acidity. Fruity. What do you mean soft?”

“Oh uhm…” I was blushing. “Neutral on my palate. And it seems to be hitting my salty taste buds on the side…”

He was staring at me like I was crazy. I decided the best thing I could do was move to the next cup of coffee. I made an appreciative noise and said, “Fruity. High acidity!” This turned out to be a good move. The two coffees were the same bean, just washed and roasted differently. Bob had lots to say about that. And then I asked him how he slurped so well, so he taught me. And I made some self-deprecating jokes, managed to spill coffee on myself and up my nose (talented!), and then go back through the line again asking questions instead of trying to sound like I knew anything at all.

In this way, I made it through my first cupping. I have no idea what kind of impression I made. But hopefully they thought I was pleasant, even if woefully ignorant. He made it a point to tell me, multiple times, about the free training they offer shops that serve Topeca exclusively. I assured him that if we chose them as a supplier, we would be taking full advantage of all knowledge, experience, and training they would give us.

And it was great coffee. If you get the chance, go grab a cup while you’re in Tulsa from one of the shops. Or if you’re buying beans, I would suggest the Ethiopia Sidamo (fully washed) or their Bourbon Natural. Both are big bodied coffees with high acidity. Fruity and wet and bold. Delicious.