CARAMEL SWIRL ICED COFFEE

I recently admitted in this blog that I just started drinking coffee.  This is all pretty damn funny since I used to be a shift supervisor at Dunkin Donuts.  I also admitted that I only drink iced coffee and not hot coffee (which is weird since I only drink hot tea and not iced tea).  It has taken me a long time, but I can and will drink two types of iced coffee:  pumpkin spice and caramel.

So today I'm feeling confident in my ability to order coffee.  I am meeting my daughter at the hair salon, and she will be running late, so I offer to bring the iced coffees with me to the salon.  We are texting back and forth, and I write, "Regular caramel iced, right?"

Almost immediately, as if to prevent my faux pas, she texts me back, "CARAMEL SWIRL."

Shit.  You mean to tell me I've just started ordering coffee and I'm already doing it wrong?

What. The. Hell.

I go in to Dunks, give my order to the kid behind the counter, and then ask him, "What's the difference between caramel iced coffee and caramel swirl iced coffee?"  (No, there was no such animal as flavored coffee when I worked at Dunks.  It was just coffee -- any way you wanted it with cream, milk, sugar, or sweetener, but that was it.  I truly am clueless.)

To his credit, the young man offers up that sometimes at Dunks when you ask for a caramel iced coffee, they just put a shot of caramel into a regular coffee.  Apparently the caramel swirl has added sugar.  Sugar on top of the sugar, which, to me, sounds like I've died and gone to Heaven.

Fifteen minutes later, I am sitting at the hair salon sipping my caramel SWIRL iced coffee.  Life is reasonably good.  Now, if I can just find a  cure for the agida I often get in my stomach from drinking this damn stuff, I might finally be able to say that after making it to this stage of my life, I have, indeed, mastered the fine art of drinking coffee. 

Well, ordering it, anyway.