Just Coffee
There was this church out here, Grace House, giving out free coffee. Cool guys, but I figured they're a church and went in there planning to fend off some evangelical conversation, get the coffee and get out. It was a Thursday evening and I was nursing a mild headache.
But as soon as I enter the lady asks: we have both hot or cold, what you having?
Huh? Hot.
I had to flush all my conversation preparedness, caught completely off-guard. I'm trying to make sense of what just happened, recalibrating, when she asks what flavour do you want. My head is still doing a flush and reboot, and I miss the flavours she lists off. I say no flavour, just hot please.
Ok. Breaths. These are just normal people handing out coffee, no need to over thi - "Would you like oat milk or cow milk with it?"
Man, I have given up on getting caught up with the conversation now. I stick to my safe option: "Just hot please". Just hot please I say. God.
The lady, super kind soul that she is, says oh ok, let me top you off a bit then. See she had accounted for milk, which could be occupied by more coffee now. Completely logical. But my brain has given up. Dug in. Hot coffee. So I go "No no, whatever you have in hand is fine. Just that. Please."
That is how I ended up with black coffee when I could have had something fancy like pumpkin spiced mocha latte. Because I spent too much time pre-empting a conversation and flushing/resetting from a branch mis-prediction (hello advanced computer architecture).
Never even got asked about Jesus.