the troll and the keurig
on pushing buttons and getting coffee
Hello, yes, good morning Keurig! The coffee is hot yes?
I belted my greeting out to the coffee lady using my best Borat accent.
Very niiiiiice I continued.
If I had of crept up behind her and smashed a pair of symbols together I don’t think I could have possibly been more charming.
Charming?
Yes dear reader, that was the intent.
And here?
It was a typo.
I couldn’t have been any more jarring.
She paused with her mouth gaping
What did you just call me?
Ah-ha! I met one - one of those ladies who find men’s attempts at humour to be some sort of unwanted sexist impositions.
With that in mind, I continued to push.
Yello, yes, you are the coffee machine - keurig - yes. I make joke. Good joke. Top funny. Not
Top. Funny. Not.
I ran the three words together almost as throw aways.
The disgust on her face was palpable.
Coffee machine?
She dripped with authentic seriousness and a strong sense that she wanted to social justice all over me.
But?
But I was the customer.
And she had a boss so I was going to continue with my joking.
This wasn’t privlidge. I wasn’t being a toxic dude. I was being a dad entertaining himself.
Male, female, a ‘they’, it didn’t matter what was behind the counter. In my mind?
They were the coffee maker and therefore would be mislabeled as the Keurig.
I was being highly problematic. Instead of using her preferred pronouns, I put her into the category of an object - a coffee maker.
Why? Because she was making coffee. That was her function in my life, nothing more.
As such, naming her Keurig was a fucking golden joke in the land of dad jokes.
But, given the fact that it was a dad joke, it was necessarily a bad joke made only for my amusement.
Hey, I go home to my teenage children and I KNOW NOTHING.
I’m the stupidest person on the planet who gets everything wrong.
I might as well inflict some of this idiocy onto the rest of the world.
You know what I mean?
I can’t just let myself be em bare assing to my kids.
That awkwardness is a gift and I am always out to share the wealth.
Sadly, Ms. Keurig had all the humour of an ICE agent locking up a kindergartener.
With that in mind, I continued.
Coffee. It needs the oat milk. I like. In my country, I milk the oats myself. Good fun for late night.
As I described ‘milking the oat plant’ I mimed a milking gesture.
Two big squirts please!
And as expected?
The word ‘squirt’ was very unwelcome. The furrow in Ms. Keurig’s brow went deeper than the Grand Canyon.
I didn’t know what her story was, but she certainly didn’t want a middle aged man to show up as the main character in her day.
She certainly wasn’t in mine.
Instead?
She was coffee machine - a supporting actor in the comedy that I was writing.
Me?
I was a supporting actor in her uptight drama.
We’re all the star of our own show.
We all have a big story in our heads.
But todays attempts at comic relief turned into vilinay for one and a good belly chuckle for this troll.
Play your own story.
And when they send in the clowns?
Be sure to give squeeze the oat udders with love.