SLUG: A03_friday_coffee_ritual
SET: A
CONCEPT: The Friday morning coffee ritual
HEADLINE: Watch the setup video
WORDS: 607

I make the coffee first now, before I open the phone, because I already know what the number is going to say.

Four Fridays in a row.

Same sender line. Same time of morning.

I stand at the counter with my back to the window and I listen to the coffee maker click and hiss and I pick the phone up last, on purpose, like a little private thing I do for myself.

$1,502 the first Friday.

$1,428 the next one.

$1,317 the one after that.

$946 the week I had the flu and only half ran the thing.

PHONE EARNINGS.

That's what shows up in the sender line every time.

I laughed the first time I saw it because it sounded like a scam email, and here I am four weeks later with the notifications stacked on top of each other like a little pile of receipts I keep opening back up when I can't sleep.

I need to tell you where I was in March.

Water bill past due. Emma's ortho payment coming on the 15th. Car tag renewal. Barely anything in the checking account and a knot in my chest I could not swallow around.

I sat in the Walmart parking lot with a receipt in my lap for the two things I had put back on the shelf and I cried the ugly kind of cry, the kind where your shoulders shake and you don't care who sees.

The lady parked next to me got out of her own car and knocked on my window.

I rolled it down because I did not have the energy to pretend I was okay.

She said honey whatever this is, you don't have to carry it in a parking lot by yourself.

She pulled out her phone and she showed me a short setup video she had been running for about eight months.

She said honey it's just a little phone thing that runs off the house wifi. Twenty minutes to set up on a Sunday morning and then you kind of leave it alone.

I set the thing up before church that Sunday.

I barely paid it any attention for the first two weeks because I forgot. Life got in the way.

Then the first Friday came and a small number showed up in the phone.

The next Friday a little more.

The one after that more than that.

And then these four Fridays. In a row. Sitting there when I open the phone.

I don't know how to explain what it does to a person, to KNOW.

To stand at the kitchen counter on a Friday morning and know.

To pour the coffee first, on purpose, because you can. Because the number is going to be there whether you rush to it or not.

I still think about that lady in the parking lot.

I think about the fact that she saw me breaking and she did not look away.

I have started doing the same thing. When I see someone at the pharmacy counter counting bills back into a little wallet, or a mom in the cereal aisle putting a box back on the shelf, I tell them about the phone thing. I tell them the same way she told me.

If you are the person sitting in a parking lot right now with a receipt in your lap and a knot in your chest, tap the button under this post and watch the setup video.

Same one she showed me.

If you have a phone and wifi you can run this thing too. Pass it on.
