Chocolate Glazed Donut

My parents are coffee drinkers; coffee is an integral part of their day. I like the smell but do not care for the aftertaste. When my brother and I were young, we were given coffee from time to time which I enjoyed with milk and a great deal of sugar, but it was in those years that I saw coffee for what it was: an addiction most adults had. I didn't want to require coffee to wake up (though I would likely lead a more alert life if I did).

Nearly every afternoon, my parents drive to Dunkin' Donuts for their midday jolts. 1 medium coffee black, no sugar; 1 medium coffee with just milk. If I'm along for the ride, I typically get nothing, but occasionally I'll feel like a chocolate glazed donut. The name is misleading since a number of franchises use the same name to describe two different donuts: one is a glazed donut with chocolate icing, the other a chocolate cake donut with a sugar glaze. I'm only interested in the latter but am always resigned to the fifty/fifty shot I have of getting what I want in the same way that when I ask for bacon, I request it burnt but have never sent it back if it was soggy.

Since my dad does the driving and hence the ordering, it can become a complex request. Within the car, we'll go through what I actually mean even though I've told him to just say, "chocolate glazed donut." Then he goes through the rigamarole over the intercom which embarrasses me and is exacerbated by his hearing loss. The only way really to be sure is to look in the bag once they hand it over.

One particular day, we had all successfully received what we wanted, and my dad pulled over on a back road so he could take a sip. It's not a place I would've stopped as it was fairly industrial, but at least we were in the semi-shade of a tree. Ahead of us, another car stopped at the edge of a parking lot that met our road. An old man got out and when I next looked up, an arc of piss was hitting the base of a tree. "Lovely," my dad commented.

"Yeah," I agreed. Mom was sitting in back and probably couldn't see, so we didn't draw her attention to it. Though the old man was a hundred or so feet from us, I wondered why he wasn't facing away or on the other side of the tree. I looked at his car and got my answer: he had a passenger and was facing away from her. Classy.

If nothing else, I felt good about my instinct not to park there.