By Quinn Proudler
It’s 7:57 on a Tuesday morning at Oliver Ames High School, the main office is bustling with its usual lethargy, the copy machines are smudging your third period test, and walking in after the bell is some student with an iced coffee from Dunkin™. Sufficient to say, another day in Middle class suburbia continues, but in this routine full of social norms, pressures, unionization and dwindling support for the educational system lies a few great questions that have plagued me since my first few weeks as a high school student: Why are you getting a DD coffee every single day?
How are you late to school every time? Haven’t you learned by now the time elapsed in getting this putrid beverage corporate Dunkin advertises as coffee? And do you really think it’s believable that you “overslept” or “didn’t set your alarm” when the administration can literally see the lie in the twelve ounce cup you’re holding?
Many nights I’ve found myself tossing in my sleep pondering these idiosyncrasies, yearning for some type of answer. I can understand that there are those that feel public education benefits them due to the 351 likes of their vaping video.
I jive with those individuals. It’s absolutely criminal that the state provide you with free education against such practices for valid health reasons, but my concern is for those that feel the need to arrive constantly truant with that cup of brown water.
I’ve purchased coffee from a DD before and found much to be desired. Like seriously, is it worth the 30 minutes sitting in detention after school? Then, as if matters couldn’t get any more paradoxical, the majority of children I’ve observed simply end up throwing out said half-full coffee around 4th block. Did you finally realize that your coffee was crap? If so, why on earth would you do the exact same thing again the next day?
If you feel obliged to have coffee for social reasons or just necessitate it to fuel your life blood (college admissions will make you understand) it is my civic duty as a student of OA to at least set some guidelines and advice.
1. Don’t drink crap coffee. It’s outright sinful to everything sacred.
2. If your social mandate requires you to purchase your coffee from a branded corporation, just get up the extra five minutes. I guarantee the decreased time in precious sleep is superior to spending half an hour with the gym teachers in the cafeteria .
3. If you consistently don’t drink the whole coffee, don’t buy the largest size! Get a small and be done with it.
4. Drink tea.
5. Just do the very best you can to drink your overpriced sludge water in the least pretentious way possible. We know you have a coffee, it’s unnecessary to play with the ice noisily and make a Shakespearean production about depositing it into the wastebasket.
If you actually read this far I thank you personally for engaging in the dying practice of owning an attention span and encourage you to submit any request for rants on any part of OA student life that you would find interesting and want to read. There is no such thing as too petty.
Quinn Proudler is a writer and columnist of the Proudler Commentary for the Daily Olivian.