Telling Secrets

So, people tell me things.  It's always kind of been the case.  Sometimes they're big secrets, sometimes minuscule tidbits of gossip.

Sometimes I have a bunch of secrets in my possession all at once and I just feel like I need to spew them or I'll explode.  Back in college, I came up with a solution to this: my roomie became my blabber-mouth-buddy.   People told her a lot of stuff too, and so it just kind of happened that people could assume that if I knew something, so did Nicole (and vice versa).  Don't get me wrong; there were exceptions to this rule -  if it was a real whopper of a secret, my lips were sealed.

Have you ever noticed that there's something about coffee shops that just simply begs for the telling-of-secrets?

I get to share a few moments of conversation at the bar with handfuls of random customers I've never met before, who are just passing through on their ways to whatever's next in their days, and who I will probably never see again.  In these moments while I'm finishing up their beverages, in an attempt to fill the awkward space and time between us, or perhaps because there's a primal need within all of us to tell someone, anyone, our 'stuff,' I get told things.  Often, things more personal and intimate than I, in my role as annonymous-beverage-preparer deserve.

Frederick Buechner, in his memoir that shares the same title as this blog post, writes that:

'What we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else.  It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are. . . because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing.  It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier. . . for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own. . .' (Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets)

And it's not just customers that come in and share their little and not-so-little secrets.  It's the co-workers too.  You work with the same group of people a lot.  It's not overly-taxing work or anything, so there's a lot of opportunity for 'doing life' with your fellow baristas while making beverages.

I made the observation to a co-worker the other day that our shop is becoming a 'boys club.'  We've had a lot of recent turn-over and it just so happens that our guy:girl ratio has gotten ridiculously skewed (we're talking like 10:4 here).  So, I work with boys all day long, but I have a brother....and this theory that growing up with sisters makes guys better guys.  All I can say is, you'd be surprised at how many guys truly enjoy girl-talk once you get 'em started. 

I have a veritable menagerie of coffee shop secrets - people's fears, pains, hopes, embarrassments.  Once I started thinking about this and the fact that I'm trusted, in some small way, to be the holder of these precious things that live at the core of our humanness, I came away with a new appreciation for the people I come in contact with every day.  The fact that we all have these secrets binds me to even that a-hole who comes into the shop and rudely has us re-make his 'messed-up beverage' for free on a daily basis, which I'm convinced he never even purchased in the first place. 

And that's kind of cool.

Lise