Pam Stone is ready for autumn and a pumpkin spice cappuccino
Editor's note: Pam Stone is on vacation this week. Here's an encore of one of her favorite columns.
It’s not the sort of thing one brags about, but I sort of look forward to going to my local gas station/mini-mart around this time of year.
They have one of those ubiquitous cappuccino machines that you stick a Styrofoam cup beneath and press a button for it to be filled to the top. Only in autumn do they stray from the usual French vanilla and hazelnut and offer “pumpkin spice."
I live for this.
“You’re crazy,” a friend admonished when I confessed my craving. “I got some kind of stomach bug from one of those machines. They never clean the insides of those things, you know."
As much as I’d like to think of myself as a maverick for shrugging off the potential of E. coli, the truth was it had been a lousy day. A chilly, wet, day that arrived with a dishwasher that decided to flood the kitchen floor and the subsequent breaking of a favorite plate upon unloading the machine. Sticking a few bucks of “regular” in the truck as I stood shivering under the gas station canopy, I did what most Americans do when depressed: went in search of something to shove into my mouth.
I’m normally a tea drinker. With milk and no sugar, please. But the stainless steel top of the cappuccino machine, emblazoned with a pleasing illustration of a steaming, frothy, drink, lured me toward it not unlike a raccoon enraptured with a shiny object.
Securing my eco-hostile Styrofoam cup with its lid, I took a long pull of the drink and felt a little better. I could taste nutmeg somewhere within the hot liquid but, essentially, I was freebasing a box of “Dixie Crystals” and beginning to get a deserved headache.
Standing in line at the cash register, the cashier, a pretty brunette with sparkling eyes, looked past me to the equally young woman standing just behind.
“I’ve been waiting for you to come in,” she said, smiling. “I’ve got some good news for you. I’m pregnant.”
“Oh, my gosh!” the other girl squealed. “Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure,” the cashier replied. “I wanted to tell you.”
“I just want to do a happy dance!” her friend gasped. “I’m just so excited for you! Oh, I hope it’s a girl — they’re so much easier to buy for."
And suddenly, while at first feeling awkward and self-conscious caught between these two, giddy, Jack Russells, my depression vanished like a puff of smoke. I’ve never had a maternal urge, but I would imagine it’s something akin to looking at kittens on local humane society websites and desperately wanting them all.
At any rate, my mood brightened immediately, and I was grateful that this young woman had chosen to share her intensely private news in front of the general public standing in line at a gas station. I actually even mumbled something like, “Well, isn’t that great?” and “Is it your first?” Because it’s just impossible, isn’t it, not to get caught up in the excitement between two giggling Southern girls? Too bad we can’t bottle this sort of mood-lifter and sell it. Call it something like, “Y’all, listen!"
And it’s ever so much better for you than pumpkin spice.
Email columnist Pam Stone at pammstone@gmail.com