Everyone who is anyone knows what a Pumpkin Spice Latte – affectionately known as the PSL—is, and most people love to hate them.
The PSL is the signature drink of the fall loving, UGG boot wearing, yoga pant adoring, “basic white girl.” Starbucks breaks out the offensively orange drinks at the start of fall to celebrate arguably the best time of the year. There is some debate as to when the right time is to break out the holiday classic, and many people are firmly in the camp that September 2nd is much to early.
I however, feel that it is never too early to ring in the autumn season with a little pumpkin-y goodness. So today, I vowed to get a PSL before my last class of the week and here is what occurred.
I should preface this article by saying that I do not, under any circumstance, handle caffeine well. I know this, and yet I still drink caffeinated beverages. I usually stick to tea; I have found that the caffeine in tea is much more gentle on my delicate system.
I tend to get really crazy and crash really hard when I partake in coffee, and don’t even get me started on Mountain Dew. My hands shake, my heart races, I feel like I could vibrate out of my body. I will never do drugs because this must be what the hard stuff feels like except way worse (also drugs are bad and hazardous to your health).
I should also say that I have had a pumpkin spice latte once before, many moons ago and to my supreme disappointment, hated it. I’m a Halloween baby, I love everything pumpkin spice and autumnal on principle.
My original thoughts were that the beverage tasted vaguely like the color orange, and not in a good way. Huge disappointment! But my trusty barista friends at the bookstore at which I am employed have told me that the secret to a good PSL is to ask for some chai tea in it. Chai lattes on their own taste like Christmas in a cup, so I could see why a little bit of that stuff could make a mediocre latte 10 times better.
And so my journey begins: At approximately six o’clock this evening at my local Starbucks. There was a semi-ominous sign on the menu board that simply said “Its Back…” I personally thought the ellipsis was unnecessary since it didn’t actually serve a purpose grammatically; the statement would have been just as impactful with a simple period or no punctuation at all. But I digress…
Anyway! When it was my turn to order, I asked the barista for a grande pumpkin spice latte with chai. She informed me that a grande PSL usually has four shots of pumpkin, and then asked if I wanted to substitute two of those with chai. I am fairly new to doctoring my Starbucks drinks, so I had absolutely no idea what the correct protocol was and I told her as much.
She laughed and said she’d figure something out for me. For some reason, I trusted this smiley barista implicitly. I totally would have tipped her if I had seen a tip jar, and if I had any cash in my wallet. To the nice barista, if you’re reading this: I appreciate you; I just have no money to give you.
As I waited for my drink, I snapchatted a series of ambiguous pictures so that the world (aka my 10 Snapchat followers) wouldn’t know the levels to which I sank for science and the sake of experimentation. And then it arrived.
My latte looked the same as any other Starbucks drink except for the fact that it was an unsettling shade of orange. It smelled vaguely of cinnamon and something sweet. When I took my first sip, I was acutely aware that I was drinking a coffee beverage and knew that I was in trouble.
It tasted pretty decent, like cinnamon coffee with some indescribable flavor that must be pumpkin. The chai is a vast improvement over the original PSL, and I would recommend switching out the two shots of pumpkin for a little tea action. Overall, it wasn’t terrible tasting but I’ll stick to my usual order.
What I didn’t account for was the aftermath of the PSL.
I got to class feeling pretty good about myself; I was having a pretty good day, things were looking good. I was looking forward to my class. All was well until about half way through.
I already have a pretty short attention span, and often have trouble holding still for extended periods of time, but this was something else entirely. My hands started to shake, my heart was beating out of my chest and I was talking a mile a minute. This is not a new feeling for me, it happens all the time when I put caffeine into my body (except this time I had to sit through the rest of my Shakespeare class while feeling like I was about to crawl out of my skin).
After class, while walking to my car, I’m pretty sure I flashed my friend some crazy eyes. Hopefully he still talks to me after that.
Two hours later, my hands have stopped shaking as much, but I’m pretty sure I won’t sleep tonight.
No big deal.
I blame the unique combination of coffee, sugar and chai tea which is just as caffeinated as coffee.
Who needs sleep when they’ve experienced the mother of all white girl drinks?
Surely not I.
