Circle schmircle

9:30 p.m. (I-got-it-at) Ross kicked me out empty-handed. I walked past Starbucks. Thought about going in. Kept on walking. Decided to go back.

I placed my grande order. The young-Jack-Black-looking barista placed an Etch-a-Sketch in front of me and nonchalantly asked, “You wanna try to draw a circle on this? You’ll get a free drink, if you can do it.”

“Uh…[pause, I dunno why] okay. Sure.”

He shows me the last failed attempt on the screen. While shaking it clean, he taunts,”You’ll be my third victim.”

“Where’s the pointer?” I make small turns of the wheels to reveal my starting point.

Barista, one-fifth of the way through my circle: “Uh-oh.”

One-fourth of the way: “She might get it. I think we have a hustler here.”

Barista’s coworkers come over to watch: “She probably has one in her car.”

Three-fourths done, the barista is clearly disappointed with my progress.

Tah-dah. I’m done. He dejectedly picks it up to show his coworkers.

Monotone: “All right. You get a free coffee. You want a venti since you earned it?”

I chirp, “Sure!”

More grumble grumble from the barista.

I comment, “Aw, you seem totally disappointed.”

“I hate giving free stuff, especially when it’s to someone who did something better than I.” (My inner grammar geek was impressed he said “I.”)

His coworker hands me my venti mocha frappaccino and we wish each other good night.

I shout “Good night!” to Jack Black Barista. “Yeah, good night. AND DON’T COME BACK.”

I left feeling a little bit like maybe I did hustle ‘em.

I started fine tuning my finger dexterity skills over 30 years ago. In the 70s, my dad would take me to “beer joints” and bowling alleys, giving me handfuls of quarters to play pinball and (late 70s) video games while he and my Uncle Tony would hustle folks over pool tables. (They were hard core players… literally, Vegas caliber.)

In the early 80s, I played video games every day after school because the boy I liked played every day. I never got the boy, but I eventually started kicking his butt in the arcade. (Maybe that’s why I didn’t get him. Hmm…) And, of course, I had Atari and Coleco. And, once upon a time in the mid-to-late 1980s, I dated an uber-gamer. (He now makes his living testing and designing high-end computer games.)

In the early 90s, I would get paid on Fridays, get a couple rolls of quarters, and head to Penn Station to play video games. I’m very proud of the day a crowd gathered ’round me to witness me beat Street Fighter. (Yeah, I beat the machine.)

I haven’t seriously played video or computer games in, like, 16 years, lest I get sucked in. Spider Solitaire is as far as this gal will now go.

And I heart Etch-a-Sketches.

And I’m a graphic design geek.

AND, the stakes were for free coffee… I LOVE free and I LOVE coffee.

BUT, in the end, it’s probably just that I got really lucky.

In any event, the coffee was deeelicioussss.

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