Saturday morning in Cambridge, out of milk, I have the bright idea go to the grocery store across the street to get milk, then why not duck into the cafe there for two lattes and a couple of croissants? All this in the rather heavy rain with an umbrella. Go!
Getting the milk is no problem, a quart and a plastic bag. The cafe provides the heavily marked up lattes and croissants, sweet. Now, there I am in the door of the cafe, a bag with croissants and the milk in my hand, two lattes waiting to be picked up and the umbrella. I need a third hand. I only have to go 25 m to get back to the apartment but it's pissing down, the umbrella is a must.
Some how I manage to hold the umbrella a little with each hand as they each also grasp a latte in addition to the grocery bag hanging off my left wrist. I push out into the street. Fortunately traffic is light and crossing the usually busy street is easy. I hurry up to the building door umbrella teetering and lattes under threat, amazed I haven't dropped anything yet.
The second trial: swiping in with the building keys. I stacking the lattes carefully and rest the umbrella against the wall, then gingerly fish the keys from my back pocket and swipe the magnetic tag across reader. The door open timer starts, and as it ticks down I'm able to put the keys back, get the umbrella, and move inside with the still stacked lattes in my grocery bag burdened left hand. There is a barely intelligible aging woman here who reeks of cigarette smoke to mumbles something nigh unintelligible about how she could have let me in. That would have been nice if she actually had.
Next: the elevator. Pressing the call button with the umbrella hand, lattes still balanced, I got into the elevator with my umbrella in one hand and the bag with the milk and croissants in the other. Those lattes remained stacked on top of each other. Two other people got into the elevator with me, unintelligible cigarette lady and woolen jumper with package man. I turned to put the umbrella in the corner so I could hold a latte in each hand, but in the course of enacting this safety measure I must have unbalanced the very latte I was trying to save and it plummeted onto the floor of the elevator car now in motion.
The latte hit the ground and the top flew off creating a latte explosion that flew all over, floor to ceiling, the half the elevator I wasn't standing in, but woolen jumper with package man was. He was on the 5th floor and I was getting off at the third. I apologized profusely, there wasn't enough for him to have been burned or anything, but he was certainly well latte-ed.
We stand there in silence, this guy with a sour look on his face, and spilled latte all over the floor of this elevator. Weird lady gets off on two. We keep going up, the smell of rapidly cooling latte creeping through nostrils, silence. My floor. I return to my relatively normal morning, while package guy starts Saturday off slightly more caffeinated that expected.
