25 October 2026
barista my age, retired from GIANTCORP and is now happy as a barista.
After leaving the little purple house on 17th street, we toddled across the street to a bookstore. Which is new, because I was pretty sure it was Strings back in the day, but I am really dating myself. Maybe it was a small restaurant and pub. I wonder what happened?
Anyway, it's now Denver Book Society---they opened last year---and it's fabulous. It's been years---years----since I've sat in a bookstore at a coffee bar and just chatted the afternoon away.
The barista shared that she is a retired Big Deal from A Big Company Here In Colorado and works as a barista in the bookstore for funsies. Because, being A Big Deal retired from A Big Company, she has plenty of moohlah to pay her bills and have insurance. Good for her. I said "good for you" and then she told me her age...and I went silent.
She's my age.
A second employee---much younger, younger than my own children---works in the bookstore because she loves books and reading and talking to people about books and reading.
Which is why she became a teacher.
And then quit because the job as a high school lang arts teacher was not about talking to people about books and reading. So she quit.
Because it was about proving she was teaching by tracking data points and attending biweekly meetings and being observed weekly and writing directives on the board so any adult could walk in and identify her lesson, but the kids Do Not Care--you know. They wanted control over every apsect of her curriculum.
Then she became a librarian in an elementary private school---hoping a change in content and age groups would heal her literary loving soul--and that the job would be her dream of talking to people about books and reading.
It was not, and she left education entirely.
Because it was about parents attacking her for the book titles and bullying her to stop recommending books to their kids. It was a horrible experience with entitled people who wanted to control every aspect of their child's intellectual growth.
So now, she's poor but happy to be in a place where she can do what she loves.
Steph and I just shrugged---Steph left teaching years ago and I'm still being held hostage---because we both get it. This person was probably a very good teacher. She was positive, open, enthusiastic---all things the education system stomps into submission within three years. Sigh. I'm glad she got out and I'm glad she's happy.
It was wild to be in a neighborhood that is managing to hold on to both a drag house and a new bookstore.
It's not real "hope", it is a resurgence of what life was like when there was hope.
Or something.
Scene.
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