Tim Hughes, Denver, Director of Technology Infrastructure Strategy & Development

I’m truly great at a small number of things. One of those is failing college.

During my first successful attempt at this unique failure type, I engaged in the past time of all great dropouts, creating the impression of motion without moving, like paddling a canoe sitting on display at Cabella’s. You don’t really fool anyone but the rower.

During a bout of my self-deluding “impressionism of movement movement,” I decided I needed to find a new chemical stimulant to improve my study powers. Maybe my cousin and I could find it at the new-fangled caffeine distribution establishment, Starbucks. It seemed odd at the time that a religious and practical, not to mention fictitious, first-mate could find his way in to the business of bean-juice, but I accepted this as a necessary anachronism to achieve my movement-less goal.

With a flip of my poorly highlighted, winged hair, I attempted to parlay my limited coffee knowledge, based mostly on Folger’s and CoffeeMate, into a sentence that resembled a request for a hot beverage. If I had stumbled on the green entry rug, and smashed my pimpled nose on to the tiled floor as I entered, I would have comported myself with more grace.

As I struggled along, I was enlightened with a brilliant and unique idea, I would ask the kind, long-suffering woman taking my order “soooo, what’s good here?”

She started to reply with an answer that seemed canned at best, when a small package of brown-eyed force interjected herself from the bar. “I love the white mocha with a pump or two of toffee,” She said. My internal narrator voice whispered to the rest of my consciousness “and I love you.”

I did my best version of a casual amble over to the drink serving area and struck up a conversation. I was able to insert a couple of jokes and found myself sipping down a delicious drink, talking to a gorgeous 21 year old.

I had to be patient I knew. Women in customer service get hit on, on the reg. And I was. I was patient in two ways: one, I came in semi-frequently and didn’t ask for her number, eventually giving her mine on Valentine’s Day and two, more importantly, I didn’t tell her I was 18 until many weeks later.