Just as the student was thinking of peppermint bark, he lifted his head from his textbooks, looked out the window and sighed a heavy sigh of exasperated contentment. A gust of wind blew suddenly, twirling the unfastened umbrellas of the outdoor patio furniture. A former pile of leaves that had accumulated in a potted plant broke loose, proceeding to flurry across the street like low flying butterflies.
In the midst of these, a white sliver of paper tumbled slightly less graceful than its surrounding medium. It caught the student's attention--the bright white shade against the drab browns and dull oranges. He observed the slip of paper to be a receipt from the very coffee shop he was studying in (he was quite familiar with the format of the receipts from visiting so often and could easily recognize it from a distance.) For some reason, the enchanting little scrap distracted the student enough to permanently hold his attention.
As the receipt made its way across the street, a relatively enormous SUV covered it and for a moment, the slip disappeared. The student, with a renewed sigh, now of whimsical grief for the paper, returned to his work.
About a moment later, the receipt flattened against the window directly adjacent to the young scholar. Because of his heightened concentration (and the caffeine he'd been drinking,) this gave him a great start. The wind stopped and the receipt fell on the ground. The young man resolved to observe this little piece of trash until it had for certain disappeared from any field of view.
After the paper had settled on the ground, a young lady walked past. Walking away from the student, her stiletto heel punctured the receipt and took it with the shoe.
The student immediately thanked whatever powers were in charge of this occurrence, as the young lady was simply beautiful, dressed in a stylish outfit involving skirts, coats, shoes, jewelry, and all the other feminine accessories the student did not understand. She was carrying several bags loudly displaying the name of the store they came from. The young lady might as well have been 10 small billboards walking down the streets, but the student didn't care.
He did notice, however that she was talking on her phone. The more he listened, the more he realized that this girl was not only simply beautiful, but also simply annoying. The shrill voice rattled on at speeds incomprehensible to the male brain. Her forehead was furrowed with the wrinkles of a stressed businesswoman, but she was only shopping. She was everything the young man hated about Christmas. The hustle and/or bustle to unhealthy extents, the extreme holiday markups, the whole lot made him sad.
Just as the student began to wish that the receipt would depart from this detestable feminine display of utter commercial exploitation, she walked in the coffee shop. On the cement floor, she now heard the wrinkly rustling of the junk on her foot. Attempting to bend down and dislodge it, she dropped a fair amount of her luggage. In a comical fit of unbalanced leaning and tripping, she cursed excessively and threw the now free receipt in a wad at the nearest trash can.
Because of his perfect seat to the spectacle, the nearest trash can happened to be directly in front of the student. The receipt bounded off the rim, missing the hole entirely. He would have chuckled, had he had the time before the crumpled little paper ball, soiled with axle grease and what appeared to be a little bit of red lipstick, hit him square in the nose.
As if it was the first present opened on Christmas morning, he gasped, smiled and opened up the little paper package. He was indeed correct in assuming the receipt was from the coffee shop he had been studying in. What he did not expect however, was that he saw his name on the receipt next to the credit card number, almost completely in X's. He looked at the date. It read "December 24th" of the year prior.
Memories went into his head like a bullet. He remembered that he was in this coffee shop on Christmas Eve one year before the present. He remembered one emotion--grief.
December 15th of that year, the student had found out about his grandfather's death. It wasn't the worst shock he would receive in his life as his grandfather was very old, but he was very close to him--closer than most are with their own fathers. The old man had served as a mentor all 20-ought years of the student's life.
For this reason, that holiday season was and would always be remembered as a tough one. Christmas eve, he was overwhelmed with a depression caused by the absence of his grandfather. Wanting fresh air and time alone, he decided to walk a ways to a nearby coffee shop.
In the present, the student imagined in his head the scene that played out. He saw himself walk in with no expression, order a black coffee and sit down in a comfortable armchair. The barista brought his coffee to him with a smile, and he sipped the bold brew. The bitter drink tasted very unpleasant to him, but he was determined to drink it, as the only one in his family that drank coffee black was his grandfather.
When he stuck his tongue out in mild disgust, he smiled remembering the first time he tried coffee that his grandfather had given him. He thought to himself "I didn't much like it then, either." Instead of grief, his mind flooded with good memories of the past.
In the present, he remembered again all the good times. He remembered that the joy given to him by his grandfather made him stronger than anything else. He began to thank God for the reminder, and he then smiled at the little scrap of paper that brought him joy once again, that reminded him of the solace he found at the coffee shop.
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