I spent the last block of my walk to Peet’s in deep contemplation. Did I want a small (10 oz.) or a medium (12 oz.)? The difference was neither two ounces nor 15 cents; it was purely psychological. It’s like potato chips. You know that the small bag of chips is plenty, that you’ll feel great after a small bag of chips. But instead, you buy the big bag of chips, you eat them all, you feel sick, and you ask yourself why in the fuck you didn’t go with the small bag.

My favorite person was working the register: the forty-something manager with yellow teeth and librarian hair. She’s the only one who gives me ten cents off for drinking my coffee in a mug. I have a hunch she talks to her flowers when she gardens.

Another barista - the Latina hipster with worn flannel shirts, an almost-mullet, and small plugs in each ear lobe - placed a medium mocha on the bar and called out its owner’s name with boredom. “Abdul.” Then there was a glint of mischief in her eyes. She turned to her co-worker and added, altogether too loudly with an affected air of ebonics defiance, “Paula Abdul.” The next five seconds seemed like five minutes. I had heard what she said. Abdul had heard what she said. At least 10 people heard it.

Everyone’s face, except for Abdul (dressed in black and white Muslim garb and staring into his mocha), was frozen in awkwardness. The spheres of urban, pop-culture hipsterdom and proud, multicultural tolerance had collided and no one knew the protocol. Was it a time to laugh? At someone’s expense? Click tongues in disapproval? Make a stern face and look away?

In the end I almost laughed myself. Not at the Paula Abdul remark … that didn’t seem so funny to me. But the awkwardness that followed: that almost had me howling.

I don’t smile for portrait photographs. And when someone tells me, “oh my god, the funniest thing happened to me,” I can almost guarantee you that the “funniest thing” won’t make me laugh. The reason isn’t because I’m not happy-go-lucky; it’s because I’m socially retarded. As John Tierney wrote today in the New York Times:

Occasionally we’re surprised into laughing at something funny, but most laughter has little to do with humor. It’s an instinctual survival tool for social animals, not an intellectual response to wit. It’s not about getting the joke. It’s about getting along.

Me, interested in getting along? I actually laugh all the time. Not to be swell, but because I happen to have ridiculously funny friends/girlfriend/and sister. Last night, on our way to Vietnamese food I tell Mari that my gym doesn’t have air conditioning. She says, “what! Oh hell no, that is skankapholic!”

Skankapholic! Man, I thought I was going to wet myself. And when she’s not able to come up with words like skankapholic, she’s good enough to walk into television sets.

While my sister and I were headed down to Southern California and having way too much fun as we did so, she made the observation that she’s never seen our dad really laugh. This is true. He does the polite fake laugh constantly. But I’ve never once seen him laughing like he couldn’t stop.

‘What’s your greatest fear’ someone once asked me. I change my mind. My greatest fear is that one day I’ll stop laughing like I have to.

* I have just realized that three of my favorite contemporary American writers all belong to what was once the “New York Times Old Boys Club of White Conservatives.” Only now, John Tierney writes about science, William Safire writes about language, and David Brooks writes about … most recently, hipster parents.