Color My Life with the Chaos of Trouble

Ash’s life has been fairly average to date. He grew up comfortably enough, got through school with decent grades and made a handful of good friends along the way. He grew up in your average suburban community, and his parents are happily married and fussing over what they’re going to do when they retire.

He moved away for college a couple years ago and his mom, ever the clinger, calls him at least three times a week to check in on him even though he insists that he’s more than capable of taking care of himself. He’s twenty now, and his birthday is coming up. He’s plenty grown; he doesn’t need his mother fretting after him at all hours of the day but she still does because that’s what mothers do and nothing he says will ever get her to stop.

Ash now lives in an apartment building that’s just a short bus ride away from campus, and his roommate is his best friend, a girl by the name of Olivia with knowing eyes and a thoughtful smile. They share a two-bedroom apartment on the fifth floor, and he works in a coffee shop that goes by the name of “Jitters” while he’s not studying to get his degree in Creative Writing (what exactly he’s going to do with a degree like that, he’s not quite sure, though he has some far-flung dreams of being a writer tucked away somewhere in the recesses of his mind that he might just dust off someday if inspiration strikes).

Ash has worked at Jitters for just over half a year and he actually rather enjoys his job most of the time. Every so often there’s a grumpy, impatient customer who thinks that the few minutes it takes the barista to make the coffee the way they like it is too long and everything should be instantaneous, and those days, Ash kind of just wants to punch someone in the face, but for the most part, he’s comfortable with where he is, perhaps not happy, per se, but comfortable nonetheless.

Jitters has a very quiet, calm atmosphere that Ash finds very soothing and he gets along fine with his boss and the assortment of people who come through every day are quite fascinating. He used to work the morning shift, from six-thirty till ten, because his classes had all been later in the day, but now with the start of the new semester and his new class schedule, he’s changed to working the afternoon shift, comes in around three and finishes when Jitters closes at seven. After working the afternoon shift for just a week, Ash thinks he likes it considerably better than working the morning shift. It means he doesn’t have to deal with the grumpy, half-awake people morning brings, and instead, people are more relaxed, ready to unwind after a stressful day with a warm drink and some people watching.

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Jitters is a small coffee shop that sits on the corner where Fourth Street meets Broadway. It opens just as the morning rush begins and closes just after everyone has settled in for the evening in order to catch the most people, ready to provide caffeine to whoever might need it during the busiest hours of the day. It’s a quiet, cozy little place that always smells like bittersweet coffee and has an assortment of round tables and booths scattered about for customers to sit and maybe read a book or peruse the daily newspaper while they sip their hot drinks and nibble on pastries. Old, framed movie posters hang upon the walls, displaying names of once-famous movies and outdated stars. Orangey-yellow lights cast a warm, welcoming glow over the entire room, and there’s a chalkboard on the wall behind the counter displaying whatever seasonal coffee flavors or special pastries Jitters has to offer.

The corner of Fourth and Broadway is a very busy street corner, an intelligent choice of location for a coffee shop, bustling with people during rush hour, when everyone is going to and fro, parents and wives and husbands heading home for the evening, teenagers and college students and young, careless men and women in their twenties head out for dinner and perhaps a fun night out to forget about the world.

Jitters sees a wide variety of people over the course of the day: stay-at-home moms rushing in and out on their way to bringing their children to school; tired businessmen dressed in sharp suits, Blackberries in hand, clicking through the slough of emails that never seem to stop coming in, no matter what hour it is; a handful of college students exhausted from staying up to the wee hours of the morning stopping by before heading off to their early classes; high schoolers trying too hard to look cool and ordering strong, bitter coffee to look trendy and mature and giggling at each other over their cell phones.

And then there’s the regulars, the people who stop by nearly every day: the solemn, thirty-something woman who orders a cinnamon mocha, always iced, and tucks herself away in the corner with a thick, dog-eared book with yellowed pages; the man in his early or mid twenties with letters tattooed across his knuckles who arrives with a sketchpad that varies in size day by day and a box of Prismacolor markers tucked under his arm, iPod headphones dangling around his neck, and orders a soy latte; the hazy-eyed teenager with the air of someone well beyond their years who orders the white chocolate mocha without whipped cream and then sits by the window and just watches for something like an hour; the young graphic designer who orders just a simple black coffee and the proceeds to sit in a booth on the far side of the room squinting at her laptop for hours on end.

Muted, obscure music plays from the black speakers mounted in the four corners of the room, just audible over the hum of the coffee machines behind the counter and the chatter of whoever has picked this place as the destination for a casual date. The furniture and fixtures are all deep, rich wood and chrome, sleek and elegant and modern, and there’s a small display of an assortment of prepackaged bags of coffee beans available for purchase, coffee from Costa Rica, Peru, South Africa.

Jitters is usually staffed by one or two baristas who work in shifts, wearing aprons of a rich, warm brown and little gold colored nametags pinned on the left side of their chests. They’re mostly young college students simply looking for a way to cover the bills and, taking into consideration the jobs available to them, working at Jitters is actually quite pleasant, preferred even. So the girls pin their hair back and they all practice warm smiles and cheery hellos; maybe this will get them more money in tips or at least a friendly smile in return.

This is the coffee shop in which Ash works. It is, for the most part, a very ordinary place, just as Ash is, for the most part, a very ordinary person.