Coffee Girls

When I was in high school no one drank coffee. Teachers maybe, but certainly not students. True, we could used the caffeine kick to keep us conscious at 7:20am, but we just didn't drink it. As a result, I knew nothing about coffee and associated it with the adult world, far removed from our frivolous small town existence.

Though I may have been tempted to ignore or deny its existence, coffee was a big thing at the time. It wasn't what the cultural phenomenon it is now, or at least I don't think it was - remember, I was a teenager at the time, wont to deny the existence of that not directly in my own world. Coffee stands were around, as was Starbucks, though I only remember it from senior year onwards. You didn't order coffee at places like this, you ordered hot chocolate or whatever was seasonal or just whatever you could pronounce. As such, everything else was foreign, thus exotic to our small town minds and interests.

Men knew nothing about coffee, let alone cappuccinos or lattes; women knew about coffee, and not just any women, but exotic, cultured women. These were the kind of women (or girls, in our case) that drove Saabs, BMWs, and Mercedes cars, had trendy sunglasses, and knew where to go to dinner in Seattle. Their triple-shot caramel macciatto with skim milk was all but indecipherable to us, and further proof of their cultural superiority. If a girl knew what that drink was, she must know other drinks and where to get them, not to mention that she had the money to actually afford it. They were a stark contrast to girls we saw every day: blond highlights in a ponytail, hooded sports sweatshirt under the ubiquitous black North Face fleece, and flip flops. Always flip flops.

While some of those girls were content to just drink coffee, others made coffee. These girls were so beyond us they may as well have been exchange students, the kind who didn't need to be pretty to catch our attention (all foreign girls were inexplicably attractive to us). In school, music was our life, and a girl with credible musical taste was a rare commodity. Being a barista was the equivalent of a girl having OK Computer in her car stereo; you had to lock that girl down! The kind of girl that knew what the difference between a frappaccino and a latte - let alone how to make them - was the kind of girl who cut her hair short, wore funky clothes, and went to concerts in Seattle (the big city!). These girls were clearly out of our league.

Or at least they were in our minds.

In truth, they were likely the same over-caffeinated, over-tanned, future sorority sisters that litter high school and college campuses across the country*. Perhaps our perception of these girls was more informed by our sheltered fantasies than by actual observation. This is very plausible considering I was disappointed upon arriving in Ireland to find that no one looked like hobbits.

One thing that is undeniable is the ubiquity of coffee today. It's no longer just the city kids getting cranked up on the triple shot no foam lattes, it's everyone. Guys living in Arlington who drive who drive unnecessarily large trucks are waiting in line for their daily white chocolate mochas with whipped cream and sprinkles; those quirky, artsy girls that used to run the stands have been replaced by bikini baristas (see "future strippers"). This trend has completely demystified coffee for me. Sorry coffee girls, but I'm just not that into you anymore, but that guy in the truck might be.

Postscript:
It should be noted that the term "coffee girls" does not refer to all girls who work in the industry. No, the aforementioned ubiquity of coffee undermines this stereotype. There are a great deal of quality women - and men - who work in the egregiously massive coffee industry. To say that serving coffee is equivalent to having a butterfly tattoo on your lower back would be a humorous, albeit offensive, generalization to many women I know. If this is the case, I apologize.

*See nearly any teenage, female employee at your local mall for example(s)