“Firstly, I would like to thank Dr. Haley for inviting me to speak here today. It is an honor to simply be considered for such a wonderful experience. Alongside Dr. Haley, I want to thank any of the students I’ve had over the past three years for choosing to sit and listen through yet another one of my lectures. If any of you want to take a bathroom break, I promise I’ll still be talking when you return. Today I am sharing not one individual memory, but rather a Christmas tradition. Christmas has always been a special time of year for me; not because Christmas is my favorite holiday, as those I’ve taught know, Thanksgiving gets that honor, but because it’s a day where most of the country stands still. Stores are closed, traffic is sparse, and the cops are generally nice enough to give you a warning rather than a ticket even when you’re doing 20 over the speed limit because you’re 15 minutes late for a 2pm Christmas dinner. On Christmas, the quiet is a nice change of pace from the hustle and bustle of our everyday, at least for most.
For those who don’t know, when I’m not moonlighting as an AP US History teacher here at Benjamin, I spend my days behind a counter at Dunkin waiting on customers for hours on end. Most weekends I trade my Benjamin Polo for a Dunkin one, and the same rings true for Christmas morning. You see, every Christmas I open up one store out west, drive thru only, and provide people the breakfast they don’t want to cook and the coffee they so desperately need. And so we open at 6am and within no time, cars fill the drive thru, wrapping around the building and into the street for nearly half a mile long or more, and from 7am until 1pm it seems the line never moves. For every car to pass through, two more arrive and wait, and they do wait. For 10 minutes, 20 minutes, and more.
Now for some, burning your fingers on bacon grease would be a miserable morning, even more so when a whole pot of coffee spills and fills your shoes, socks, and gets in between your toes. For me, for those that work alongside me, this morning is paradise. Not only do I get to see hundreds of smiling faces happy we simply have opened, but I get to spend these precious hours working alongside my mom, who at sixty-two somehow runs faster and with more purpose than most. With my mom by my side, the hours melt away even as we bicker loudly over a bunch of nothingness as the tensions mount to provide people speedy service. For the poor family at the window who hears our loud dialogue over splenda versus stevia, or how many pumps of caramel they wanted in their latte, a dialogue which to most sounds like a brawl is about to ensue, I promise this is simply our Portuguese language of love. Now despite all the small fights, the burnt fingers, the soggy socks, I wouldn’t trade this time for anything. The time we spend together on Christmas, two stubborn Napoleonic complexes with the heights to prove it, is pure and utter paradise.
Beyond the incessant quarreling between my mom and I, which on Christmas my gift is to let her win those battles, the real fun begins. I cook food, I take orders, and I cash out customers at our drive thru window. During my time, I see exhausted parents who have been up all night with newborn babies getting their morning espresso, and that espresso being the difference of whether they’ll retain their sanity for the day. I see teenagers like you all with their new wallets and iphones eager to show them off, buying 20 bacon egg and cheese croissants for their families. I see single dads, eager to make Christmas for their kids a good one with a dozen donuts packed with love. I see tired truckers who have been driving all night just to make it home in need of a fresh hot coffee. It’s for these people and more I choose to work that day.
And as the day slips by, as 1pm rolls around, as the cars begin to stop showing up, we clean. We wash dishes, flush out the coffee brewers, and scrub the equipment until it’s spotless enough to pass a Health Inspection. When the clock strikes 1pm, I get into my car, and I block our drive-thru from further entry. I then count the cash we bring in for the day, every dollar, nickel and even penny, and then I count it once or twice more because, as Mr. Ruggie could tell you, I’m the best math student he never had. When the counting is done, the doors are locked up, I race my way to that 2pm Christmas dinner that somehow gets earlier and earlier every year. Now, as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to realize that for me Christmas isn’t about the gifts, or the delicious food at a dinner that barely counts as lunch time, or even the two weeks off from school; it’s about those small moments of joy that get passed out from one family to the next just one cup of coffee at a time. Thank you!”
