Playing Fair and Being Kind

Two instances this A.M. regarding how words come into being. Not words per se. Words formed in ways and uttered to define new or improved life styles. Words that I still key on in my mind to the ways they were used when I was a living, breathing man of the world.
In the first instance, as I was making myself a large cup of Italian roast dark coffee, I was using a Malita cone filter system. The paper filter, Malita brand, was carefully folded into a plasic cone and all of it was perched inside the mouth of my “Nancy Button” Fireside Pottery ceramic cup. It occured to me that I have tripped up when a barista(?) would ask me what kind of cup of coffee I wanted. This is where my mind shakes its head and rolls its eyes. The barista(?) (sounds like a revolutionary!) would blurt out a question I can not repeat only because only a third of the words in the question I could recognize. Let me try to reproduce the interaction we had.
Me: “I’d like a cup of coffee please.”
Barista(?): “Blabbity blah, blabbity blah, blah, blah, pourover?”
Me: “I don’t know what you just said”.
Awkward pause…both of us with mouths open and expressions of anticipation. You know, eyes wide, brows raised, head slightly cocked to one side, body leaning forward. Then the side eye to break the tension.
Me: “Just give me a cup of coffee please. What’s a pourover?”… (suddenly gathering the meaning of making coffee using a water system poured into a filter system).
Barista(?): “That where we pour the water through a cone filter…”
Me: “I get it. Yeah, one of those.”
Barista(?) “Grande?”
Me: “I’m sorry?”
Barista(?) “Short, Tall, Grande, Venti…?”
Me: mentally…”Eenie, Meenie, Minee, Moe…” “What is this called”, picking up a ‘grande’.
Barista(?) “That’s a ‘grande’
Me: “Great! I’ll have a ‘grande’ ‘pourover’!”
I’ve been broken and re-educated to fit into the system used today. A member of the ‘party’, so to speak.

The second instance was later this morning on social network “Facebook”. (Let’s not go there!) A reenactment of a legal depostion involving an argument over the use of the word ‘photocopy’. The name “Xerox” showed up in the discussion. I was transported, as is the way of ‘triggers’, to a time and place long ago and far away. My honey and I were staying with friends of hers in Newport Beach, California. The couple were nouveau riche types who made me feel welcome as well as wary. My head was on a swivel the whole time. He was an executive at a “Xerox” plant nearby. During the evening he explained that the company was making an effort to disuse the brand name from becoming a common verb in photocopying parlance. As you know they failed.

That’s it for now. My Venti pourover is getting cold.

G. M. Goodwin
3 July 2018