I’m hot. I’m cool. I’m lost. I’m found.

I’m so hot in this San Diego coffee shop I’m sitting in. I feel like I’m in a coffee pot. It’s too bad, too, because if ever in my life I had a chance to come across as genuinely cool person, this is it. I’ve got my laptop, as far as anyone can tell I’m deeply concentrating on some very important intellectual work, besides me sits a brain-stimulating mug o’ latte.

Could I be any cooler? Except for the fact that I’m dying of heat?

Plus, how cool can I really be, given that my latte is decaf? I don’t want it to be—but apparently it’s part of God’s plan that, once you hit about 35, your choices, when it comes down to having caffeine anytime after noon, boil down to three:

1. Have some, barely wake up, and then spend that night twitching in your bed like a flea-infested werewolf during a full moon.

2. Don’t have any, and then spend the day randomly passing out like a person with advanced narcolepsy.

3. Drink decaf, and then spend the day desperately wondering what happened to your lost, wasted youth.

Of course, you may not have had a lost and wasted youth. And no one really does, of course: God means for everything that ever happens to us to ultimately be used by us as a means of enhancing our understanding and appreciation of his love.

So it’s all good.

That said, though, man, did I had a child and young adulthood that … well, really put the funk in dysfunksional. Just … awful, really.

But. That happens. And to a great many more people than it should, of course. Given that Bad Childhood Stuff should never happen to anyone at all.

But it does.

Then—if one is very, very fortunate—God comes to one’s rescue.

Then everything’s beautiful.

Then, just sitting in an absurdly overheated coffee shop can seem like one of the funnest things in the world to do. Even if you are drinking decaf.

johnshore@sbcglobal.net