It’s only a hypothesis

by David Benjamin

“I love coffee, I love tea/ I love the java jive and it loves me/ Coffee and tea and the java and me/ A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, boy … ”
—Milton Drake & Ben Oakland

MADISON, Wis.—“No coffee?” I cried. “What the hell do you mean, no coffee?”

This outcry came near the end of a 2,000-mile road trip to a conference in New Jersey where I’d gone to pick up a bunch of book awards. My journey had included two AAA emergency calls, an hour of gridlock on I-80 caused by sinkholes, a flat tire, a scary, hairy drive through fogbanks in the Poconos and the fracture of a windshield wiper during a downpour in Ohio. So, when the kid at Burger King (Motto: “Have it your way”) told me, yes, we have no coffee, my Christian forbearance was at low ebb. I felt the urge to vault the counter and throttle him.

My restraint from doing so derived mainly from my awareness that the kid—younger and more athletic than me—was more likely to throttle than be throttled. Before dawn that day, I’d departed a Holiday Inn in Wauseon, Ohio and managed to survive a caffeine-deprived hour on the road. It was still before eight a.m. when I pulled into a “service” plaza in Indiana. Most of its outlets for food, drink and Hoosier souvenirs were still shuttered, leaving as my only option a Burger King that looked, at first glance, deserted. But I persisted. By and by, I was able to order something called a “croissandwich” whose nomenclature could only be regarded as ironic. This was when I encountered the kid.

He was perhaps sixteen, blond and tall, good-looking after the featureless fashion of a pod person in Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It was my request for coffee that stirred him into a facsimile of human feeling. He gazed incredulously, as though I had asked for a date with a movie goddess who’d died before the advent of talkies, and he said, “Coffee? There’s no coffee!”

My retort (see above) mixed surprise with a sense that I’d trespassed into a future wherein the routine mores of bygone times were not only defunct but were repulsive to a new, improved generation. The kid had been insulted. I slunk away from him, anxious that he might leap the barrier and confiscate my croissandwich.

As I chewed my sad breakfast, I waxed nostalgic. Since time immemorial, I recalled, the first duty of the first arriving employee at a diner, cafe, restaurant, truck stop, greasy spoon, even a 20th-century Burger King, was to brew coffee, knowing that the first patron across the threshold would be jonesing desperately for a cup of joe. It’s possible that this Burger King has a coffee machine, but this kid hadn’t gotten the memo. More to the point, our brief dialog that morning wasn’t really about coffee and this kid’s failure—or refusal—to brew a pot for sleepy oldtimers in need of a jolt. It was about the kid himself, about his peers and about his state of social engagement.

Bear with me. I have a hypothesis.

Largely to their credit, kids have always tuned out grownups. However, while kids like me, when I was one, traditionally feigned indifference to adult goings-on, we’ve always eavesdropped. Surreptitiously, we learned adult concerns, studied adult style, patterns of speech, means of communication. I picked up on secrets and tucked them away. By instinct, kids resist grownup ways. I certainly did, fiercely, but I observed and absorbed from grownups enough know what I was resisting—and why. Kids might have regarded grownup talk—and instruction—as background music, but the tune became an ear worm that stuck in our heads.

Today might be different.

Now, there is a force that not only enhances kids’ power to resist, it empowers kids—more thoroughly than ever before—to ignore the ebb and flow, the anxieties and challenges, the very necessities of adult life. By immersing in social media on smartphones—the most ubiquitous and pervasive technology in the history of childhood—kids have made it possible to attain a depth of social isolation unprecedented in human experience. Often unaware of the seduction of their “devices,” they enter a cocoon so hermetic that they lose touch with the world around them and barely know what’s going on out there.

Moreover, what’s going on out there is less real to them than the hypnotic flow of pixels that bonds them to a tiny screen and parents them through all their waking hours. Informed by the dark and dazzling heralds of mobile telephony, kids are tempted to see the future as a black box filled—by malevolent grownups—with evil portents better postponed, avoided, forestalled and submerged in a well of solipsism. Hence, my Burger King barista’s amazement at some old guy asking for coffee from an advanced life form for whom coffee has no smell, no flavor, no place, no meaning, for whom a craving for coffee can only be an affront to his sensibilities.

Okay, so it’s only hypothesis.

Fortunately, I can offer context, with another significant—and happier—moment on my road trip.

After my driver’s side wiper disintegrated, I found it difficult to see the road, or other cars, or even the hood of my own car through the sheets of rain pouring down my windshield. So I had to get off the highway and, somehow, find a source for a new wiper blade.

My exit from I-80 took me to the village of Delta, in Ohio. I entered and drove gingerly past a series of storefronts closed on Sunday. Barely able to see, I pulled into the parking lot of Marco’s Pizza. I got out and trudged through puddles, uncertain whether to seek help or just order a pizza. I decided what to do when I saw the woman behind the counter. She was a mother. She was a grandmother. She was local. She had neighbors. She took care of their kids and they took care of hers. She knew half the people in Delta and she could drive blindfolded most of the roads for fifty miles around. She knew the territory.

I told her my problem. She dropped everything else and said, well, there’s a NAPA auto parts store in town but it’s not open Sundays. “Wait a minute,” she said. She pulled out her phone. “It think the Auto Zone over in Wauseon is open.” She called and looked me victoriously in the eye. “It’s open ’til eight!”

I looked at my watch. It was 7:10 and the rain had let up. Wauseon was eight miles away on two-lane blacktop. I reached a crossroads and there it was. I went into Auto Zone and looked for the oldest guy behind the counter. His name was Tim. He was a grandfather. (So was I.) He understood. He went out and studied my ravaged wiper. We went back in. He found the right blade, unwrapped it, took it outside, attached it, made me test it. It worked. For good measure, Tim directed me to the nearest hotel, where I met Sarah, who’s about fifty. She was thrilled when I mentioned that I’m an author. She asked for my autograph and showed me off to her daughter, Ava.

The lesson I didn’t need to learn before I encountered my Burger King coffee nihilist was not that Ohio people are nicer than Indiana people. (That’s only a hypothesis.) It’s that older folks—regardless of all the mistakes their generations have made and all the wrong people they’ve voted for over the years—know stuff. Important stuff. Matters of survival, perseverance, community, even humanity.

If you need directions, if you need help, if all you need is a goddamn cup of joe—but you really need it!—look for somebody who’s been around for a while and knows the territory.

Ask the old guy.