To My Credit

Half way through our move I lost my credit card and driver's license; or better said, they were misplaced. I remembered most of the details about the day they went missing: for some reason I didn't take a purse that day and instead carried the cards in my pocket at work. After work, I went to our house in Portland to load up the truck with junk to take down to Salem. Not wanting to get my work clothes dirty, I changed into a pocketless shorts and T-shirt outfit. Then, being very responsible, I took the cards out to the truck and put them in the cup holder. I then loaded the truck and headed down to Salem. Mac unloaded the truck that night.

The next morning the cards were gone. A very thorough search of the truck was fruitless. I was pretty certain Mac had misplaced them while he unloaded our stuff. But after four weeks of unpacking boxes, the cards still hadn't materialized. This past weekend I got to the last box - still nothing. I had been watching our card account on-line and hadn't seen any aberrant activity, so I was pretty certain the cards weren't in the hands of evil-doers. Plus, that just didn't fit with my memory of the situation.

What I forgot to remember, until today, was that halfway down to Salem, I thought the cup holder was a pretty studid place to keep a driver's license and credit card so I put the cards in the pocket of my white doctor's coat, an item that was in the process of being moved that day. The coat got immediately unpacked into the laundry room closet, where it has been sitting for over a month.

As luck would have it, I was asked to go get my picture taken for my new job in Salem today. Oh, and by the way, could I bring my white coat along so that I would look professional in the picture. The last details of my cards' whereabouts came creeping back into my mind when the cards tumbled out of my pocket.

To celebrate, I decided to stop by Starbucks on my way home from work.

"I'll have a large green tea latte," I ordered.

Aside: I refuse to use the Starbucks size lingo. Yes, I know that "tall" is the small size, that "grande," which means "large," is a medium and that "venti," meaning "twenty," is the largest Starbucks offering at 20 ounces. But to me the system is retarded because all the names mean "big." Papa Murphy's pizzaria uses similar idiotic sizing system. I once tried to order two medium pizzas. "We don't have a medium. We have personal, large and extra large sizes." But if "large" is the middle size, isn't it a medium?? Wendy's offers large and Biggie fries, but of course, no small. Why is it so terrible to order something that is less than large, extra-large or super-dooper-kajooper large??

Ok, back to the story...

"I'll have a large green tea latte," I ordered.

"Do you mean a Chai tea latte?" the cashier asks, obviously sensing my Starbucks ignorance, particularly because I don't use the right size buzzwords.

"Ok, yeah," I stammer. "Wait! Is the Chai tea latte green?"

"No [you moron] it's brown."

The other waitress gets where I am going. "We have a green tea frappaccino; it's green."

"Yeah, that's it," I exclaim.

"One venti green tea frappaccino," the cashier says pointlessly to the second woman, who obviously knows what I want. The cashier probably does this just to use the word "venti", as if I don't feel small already, or is that tall already??

"That'll be $4.20," the cashier says.

I smack my credit card down on the counter.

"Will that be on your card?"

"Yes it will!"