one 'tall,' please

“You’ve ruined coffee, you know,” he says, aloud, at the Starbucks kiosk concession at the LA airport. “All this frou-frou crap. Coffee used to be coffee, but now it’s a fucking soft drink.” The clerk looks confused, then a bit frightened, and who wouldn’t be, this day and age, when people pull out guns and start shooting anyone over anything. Just yesterday, a guy in Culver City shot a 13-year-old girl for trying to steal his lawn gnome. “Latte this, latte that. Coffee is supposed to be coffee. Fuck all this other shit.” Security is called, beckoned away from people a stone’s throw north who are busy taking off their shoes to prove they’re not terrorists. “Excuse me, sir,” the first guard on the scene says. “You’re excused, asshole,” the coffee whisperer says, in a voice louder, of course, than a whisper. “Will you please come with us?” The answer is “No,” of course, and a second guard appears, this one a bit more focused. He tasers the protestor. When he comes to, Arnie Slobodokian, the patron, will find himself face down in an airline holding cell. His first words will be, “And what’s with a goddam 'tall'?”