Conversation with My Wife (59)
It’s that time of year, and I want to make some marketing people suffer somehow (hit them with pumpkins?)
We’re at our favorite gas station* for our weekend coffees.** In between pop music over the store’s loudspeaker, we get store promotions. And one is that it’s “fall flavor time again, with pumpkin coffee, pumpkin donuts, and pumpkin desserts made to order.”
And I’m off.
ME: They are NOT serving pumpkin coffee! Nobody can make coffee out of pumpkins.***
DEB: (she’s heard this rant before) Yes, dear.
ME: It’s not pumpkin coffee. It’s not pumpkin-flavored coffee. It’s not even pumpkin spice coffee. It’s pumpkin PIE spice coffee! Cinnamon! Nutmeg! Ginger! Allspice!**** No pumpkins involved!
DEB: (looking through the refrigerated bin to find the flavored creamers she enjoys) Uh huh.
ME: It’s just laziness! Nobody wants to list the full flavor because it takes too long. Next year we’ll just have “pump” as a flavor.
DEB: Here, honey. (shows me the flavored creamer label with “Pumpkin Pie Spice” on it) Feel better, now?
ME: (having some rant energy left, but feeling like somebody stole my script) No! Maybe. I dunno. Pass me that, will you? Thanks, honey.
*Okay, it’s actually a convenience store with gas pumps, but the point is it has a self-serve island in the store devoted to crappy hot beverages. Mostly coffee, but with flavors natural, unnatural, and totally manufactured by some crazed chemist who wanted to be a chef but scored too high on their SATs to talk their parents out of going to STEM school. They spend their weekends making interesting flavors out of the stuff they find at the bottom of beakers and test tubes that coworkers leave in the sink.
**We indulge on weekends. Two 24-oz coffees, made the way we want (no kid behind the counter trying to translate our requests into brand lingo), with the proportions we want, and with the occasional chance to discover new combinations.
***Although somebody could make coffee *in* pumpkins. Which would be kind of cool. But they don’t, is my point.
****”Allspice” the kind of spice, not that they are all spices. Although they are, of course. Including allspice. BUT NOT PUMPKIN!
