TEA, FOR THE YOUNG PEOPLE

After my second pipe I went to a bubble-tea place to enjoy a passion fruit green tea beverage; medium sweet, no additions, tapioca bubbles, grass jelly squigglies, pudding slivers, or toppings of any kind.
Sare, spartan, altogether almost Calvinistically austere.
I enjoyed my own abstemiousness immensely.
And patted myself on the back.
Deservedly.


百香果綠茶[凍]

Actually, what I enjoyed most was the contortionism of the tea girl.
You see, she's short. Very short. She is not the smallest person who works there -- one of them is only four feet and a few inches - but she cannot be taller than five feet. Industrial equipment and heavy soda fountain machinery are calibrated for people of normal height. That is to say, normal white persons height. Which means that simply scooping up crushed ice requires calisthenics, and even vigorous exercise; what she lacks in leverage she makes up for by sheer effort. She's been working there long enough that I would not dare arm-wrestle her.
And she's full of beans.

I am a middle-aged coot with grey in my beard, she is probably not even twenty and quite utterly chock full of energy. You can imagine what that makes me feel.


Envious does not even begin to describe it.


No, I didn't stare at her obsessively, or even look in her direction, generally speaking. I contented myself with the rarest glance, and listening to the frequent beverage-related racket she made.
Mostly, I looked out the window at the intersection.

Had I been intently observing her, it would have creeped her out.

Females radiate disquiet and evil intent when you do that.

The anthropologist is often found dead.

He disturbed the women.



It's almost always time for tea.




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