You have got to be kidding. I was doing my last-minute purse check before heading out the door to work yesterday when I noticed that my bag seemed light.  Too light.  I reached inside and felt around.  No wallet.  I checked my gym bag.  No wallet.  I checked the floor around the purse area.  No wallet.  I checked my phone.  Two missed calls, a text, and a voice mail from the BF all to inform me that I had left my wallet at his place.  Apparently it had fallen out of my $19.95 H & M bag (you know the one–it has its own post here).  SHUT UP I HATE THIS SHUT UP I HATE THIS WHY ME WHY ME WHY ME YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS.  These were the thoughts running through my head.  Imagine if an actual problem had occurred.

Because here’s the deal:  it wasn’t a big deal.  I worked at NYU yesterday, which is five blocks from my apartment.  Which means I didn’t need my wallet to buy lunch because I come home for lunch on my NYU days.  Which means that all I needed my wallet for that day was one thing.  One vital, life-giving, thing.

COFFEE.  (Or coffe, if the above picture is to be believed.)

Being a New Yorker, I don’t have loose change lying around.  If I had, I would have already spent it.  On coffee. So short of tracking down the Soup Man and asking him for 81 cents, I was facing a scary prospect:  a morning without coffee.

Except…that’s not the whole story.  The whole story is that I wasn’t really facing the prospect of a morning without coffee.  This is because NYU provides free coffee to its faculty.  But said coffee is on the basement level and requires an additional few minutes out of my way.  As opposed to the coffee truck that IS on my way.  And I was already running late.  And the free coffee is not very good. And this was turning into A BIG DEAL.

So I hoofed it to the school and went to get my coffee.  And ALL THEY HAD WAS DECAF.  I was about to have a Serena-esque breakdown until I remembered there was another coffee machine on the third floor.  So I went there.  And I got my coffee.  And it wasn’t that bad.

Take all of your so-called problems…better put them in quotations.

I don’t make a habit of quoting John Mayer, mainly because I think he’s a douchebag, but that line from the song “Say” bears repeating here.  My overreaction to The Coffee Incident of 2009 was due to a complex interplay of factors that ran the gamut from my hatred of losing things and being late, to the fact that George and Sylvester–my regular coffee truck guys–had been missing from their usual spot on 28th and 1st since last week and I was starting to worry.  I have long suspected that their coffee and bear claws were a front for some more sinister business, but I was willing to ask no questions as long as I got my morning beverage.  Since their disappearance, I had been forced to visit a nearby truck run by some amateur who did NOT have my order waiting for me when I walked up to the window.

In short, it had been a rough week.  So the coffee debacle didn’t help.

But it did show me some things.  Mostly things I already knew but needed reminding about.  Like, for example, what a brat I am about getting my way.  How rigid I am when it comes to my routine.  How one little deviation from my plan makes me feel like the whole day (week, year, whatever) has gone off the rails.  How utterly laughable that is compared to what some people face.

Guess I should write my coffee plans in pencil.  And maybe not depend on it so much (but it really is my lifeblood in the morning–what if I had to live without it?  It would be like going without a glass of wine with dinner!).  In the meantime, I will be thankful for those little dots of humanity on the sidewalks of this city, my morning oases.  And guess what?!  George and Sylvester are back!  I walked up to the window this morning and we greeted each other like long lost friends.  I didn’t ask any questions, and they didn’t have to ask me any either–they knew my order and we made the exchange.  People who say New York is cold and lonely don’t know what they’re talking about.  Home is everywhere here–the guys who get my coffee ready, the drycleaner downstairs who knows my name.  They just better not go anywhere without telling me.