The Starbucks generation.

Starbucks is an interesting place. Pure Americana. The American dream? Maybe.

I sometimes think, “Maybe those angered Middle-Easterners who commandeered planes and then proceeded to fly into the World Trade Center towers were actually just trying to terrorize and destroy a Starbucks in Manhattan.” Maybe.

My Father has always talked about trying to buy stock in Starbucks, but it is a private corporation -- no stock available to the general public. The money he would make from investing in this gourmet coffee, yuppie-pleasing franchise; the new SUV he could buy; the third bathroom he could install in our already huge home quaintly located in the upper-middleclass, suburbs of northeastern, New Jersey.

That is the interesting thing about my Father though, he would install the bathroom himself. It’s not like our family doesn’t have the money to pay some high school drop out to do it for us, we do, it’s just that he seems to appreciate hard work more than most. He doesn’t mind getting his hands a little dirty.

Most of his family grew up on farms throughout western Pennsylvania, and I think harvesting corn, or wheat, or whatever it was that they harvested, instilled some kind of middleclass, do-it-yourself ethic in him. That same ethic was obviously not instilled in me. I mean, I did have a job, literally, the day I turned 14, but I am still getting a $24,000 a year education and board, free of charge.

I realize now: “No wonder I am at Starbucks: I am that yuppie I speak of.”

Outside, the homeless man I always see is sipping some kind of over-price drink from a Starbucks cup. I wonder if he begged all day just so he could buy that one warming drink before making his way back to his cardboard box or cave, or wherever he sleeps.

Inside, I am typing on my $1300 laptop, that I didn’t pay a cent for. The world is a peculiar place -- I almost feel like a hypocrite calling myself a liberal. I support welfare; I like to think that I can help my fellow American survive.

Elisa gave me her screen name -- I asked her for her sisters e-mail address. And what does it all mean? Is she coming onto me? But, doesn’t she have some boyfriend back in Ohio? I will let the story unfold.

But, can you listen to any of this? I have been drinking, and I took one of those numbing codeine that my best friend gave me. She told me it would help me relax, and it did; she told me it would make me real itchy, but I am only smiling.

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