spilled coffee (lyn)

I schedule a hotel van to take us over to Wash U at 8:30.  I'm up early; my son is not.  At 7:30, I leave the room, and wake Alexander to tell him of our departure time. 

I go to the lobby.  Get some coffee.  Use the computer in the business center.  Make some calls.  Schedule a van reservation for later in the day.  Then go back to the room around 8:25, and find Alexander still wet and half-dressed.

Before I have a chance to say anything, he tells me he'll be downstairs by 8:30.  He then surprises me and is.  Except the van has already left.  The hotel calls another one for us.  It arrives and we get on.  I need to go back into the hotel for a minute and I ask Alexander to hold my coffee.  When I come back on the van Alexander is seething.  The driver had decided to pull up, and in the process, the coffee spills on Alexander's khaki shorts, the ones we had specifically bought and packed for the interview he's having at 2.

We get to Wash U around 9, and Alexander goes into the men's room and does a great job of washing out the coffee stains.  Fortunately, he has a nice pair of back-up shorts.  Today is also 100 degrees (but the heat index says it feels like 106). 


In the admissions office, we see another prospective student waiting.  He's dressed in long pants, a dress shirt, and a tie.  I'm sure he's eyeing Alexander with envy.

Alexander now is carrying around a wet pair of shorts.  We know that we could lay them on the campus green and they'd be dry in ten minutes, but we both agree that we’d rather not make that kind of impression.  Yet we can't carry around a pair of wet shorts all day.  So we decide to go to the Bear Necessity Campus Store.  I'm thinking we can get a plastic bag there.

That's where we meet Tina, the cashier supervisor.

I explain our problem and ask if it would be at all possible to leave Alexander's shorts somewhere in the bookstore to dry.  Tina responds as though this is the kind of question she is asked everyday.  "Of course, you can.  I'll put it right next to the fan.  That way, they'll dry faster."  And then, almost apologetically, she adds, "I'm sorry but I won't be able to iron them for you.  We don't have an iron here."   Tina is so friendly and accommodating, if she did have an iron, I bet she would have given the shorts back perfectly ironed and without a crease, since, "Kids from the coasts don't like creases.  I think that's a Midwestern thing."

We go to the info session and then the tour.  It is brutally hot.  Then there's an open house and we meet some of the admissions people.  Everyone makes us feel welcome.  Then its time for lunch...another Caesar salad.  And now time to pick up the pants.

We go back to the bookstore and Tina is there, along with Alexander's shorts, neatly folded.  By the time we leave, Tina feels like a friend we've known forever.  Her kids went to Wash U and she wishes the same for Alexander. 

The spilled coffee turns out to have been worth it.