I stood in line with a friend at the coffee shop, and when it was our turn I ordered a decaf latte with oat milk. The girlfriend, otherwise a very nice person, laughed at me. She was right.
I’m in trouble with my decaf latte with oat milk (I just wrote latte, but you have to say ‘latte’ or young people won’t understand you). In fact, it’s not coffee. In fact, it is not milk. In fact, it is a very different drink than the one – coffee with a lot of milk – that I drank with great passion for years.
Age, wakefulness and concern for the world, and let me not erase my insomnia, have brought me to a completely different coffee plateau than where I once started, and that is that I now drink coffee that is not coffee with milk that is not milk.
And this for a woman who has been saying for years that meat substitutes are nonsense, because as a vegetarian you just have to eat vegetables and eggs and pasta and nuts, that it is not necessary at all for someone to make a fake chicken in a factory from an old piece of rubber and pink paint. for vegetarians. I think meat substitutes are nonsense, I am very outspoken about it, although I can now join the promotion team for vegetarian sausage rolls, because I think they are very tasty.
Anyway, replacing coffee and milk – once the pillars of my existence – I see nothing bad, uncultivated or tasteless in that.
The problem is mainly the other people. It won’t even. I have the tendency, sickly compulsion you could also call it, to add something every time I place this order. Shrugging shoulders and jokingly saying “sorry” with a big smile is the shortest option. Or: ‘Of course it has nothing to do with coffee anymore, but yes.’ Or wait for the barista in question to notice, and then nod deeply through the dust and shake his head at the same time and say, “I know, I know…”
All to insinuate that I used to be a rock ‘n’ roll star who gulped down caffeine with animal milk, but that due to all kinds of circumstances I now find myself forced to drink this weird drink.
I could also say: ‘I sleep very badly and I love animals, YES?!’
But then I’m afraid they might not make my coffee hot enough out of revenge. And that’s really the worst thing there is. I can take everything from myself, but not the hotness of my coffee.