This week, I have the delight of welcoming my husband and parents over from the United Kingdom for a holiday. Yes, this week — midterms week, aka the busiest week of the year so far. In deciding which week my family should visit, our ignorance of American college schedules meant our decision−making processes consisted of us thinking how nice it would be to visit in the fall. At least my loved ones are fairly good at exploring a city unaccompanied, and don't seem to think spending quality time with their daughter or wife is a prerequisite of a Boston visit. So, while I study away, my visitors all enjoy themselves, and we rendezvous for dinner so they can fill me in on everything I am missing out on. All in all, it is a perfect system — for them.
In all honesty, I think they would like more of my company, so one of the small concessions I made for my husband during his stay is that I would take him out for breakfast at a restaurant of his choice before packing him off for sight−seeing. Naturally, he wanted an authentic U.S. experience and settled for Dunkin' Donuts.
Now, I am as partial to a munchkin as the rest of Boston, but had been avoiding the local branch after an embarrassing ordering incident. Fresh from the United Kingdom, I had naturally resorted to the failsafe Brits−abroad technique of ordering by number, and had requested the number one two−donut−and−coffee combo. Unfortunately, when pressed for my coffee variety, I made the mistake of ordering a latte, which was listed on the menu under as a specialty coffee.
Little to my knowledge, "latte" and "coffee" are two different drinks, and are priced accordingly. I was foolishly laboring under the belief that a latte was a subtype of coffee in the United States, just as it is in the United Kingdom. The whole process was so confusing that a bystander had to intervene to explain the American taxonomy of coffee so I would stop holding up the line.
Anyway, I love my husband and was prepared to venture back as long as we had a jog first to preemptively burn off the extra calories. Hubby was delighted with the Dunkin' Donuts building, which reminded him of playing with Lego bricks as a child — and often as an adult, truth be told. I ordered the Big N' Toasty, which contained many more calories than the jog had burned off. Completely unprompted, Hubby went for a number one combo. Luckily, he sidestepped my ordering disaster, and we headed back to my place for a feast.
And a feast it was — I managed about half of the Big N' Toasty — Hubby ate the other half — and everything else was washed down with smooth, caffeine−rich coffee. He was like a boy in a sweet shop, a big grin stuffing his face without a care in the world — for about 10 minutes. Then Hubby started to feel a little peaky. Drawing him in for a hug, I could hear his heart pounding in his chest — and I knew him well enough to know it wasn't the close proximity to me that was giving him heart palpitations.
It seems Hubby's system is wholly unused to a big hit of caffeine and sugar so early in the morning, and wasn't processing it very well. He lay down for about 30 minutes, until he started to feel a bit better and his heartbeat returned to something approximating normality.
His final verdict? "Don't ever let me eat donuts for breakfast again."
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Tai Frater is a graduate student studying occupational therapy. She can be reached at Tai.Frater@tufts.edu.
