Once a week or so, I treat myself to a real cup of coffee in the morning. By “real,” I mean non-office coffee, not that there’s anything wrong with it: it’s Green Mountain coffee in Keurig cups and it’s not bad. But I really enjoy the coffee at Au Bon Pain, better than at Starbucks or any other local coffee café. Better still, it’s conveniently located in the Port Authority Bus Terminal, right before the glass doors leading to the subway. Only a couple other commuters graced the Pain today—must be due to Holy Week—so no pushing and shoving or waiting to grab your package of sweetener or pitcher of milk product to complete the morning elixir.

While I was carefully mixing my ambrosial brew, I overheard one of the baristas (not sure if it’s correct to call Pain cashiers baristas since they don’t whip up exotic brews) say, “I’m sick of this song. Every morning, over and over, the same thing.”

“Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” from the musical Oklahoma was wafting through unseen speakers.

She was talking to her customer. “I wish they would play something else, or I could hook up my iPod.”

The customer seemed sympathetic, nodding.

She continued, “Yeah, it’s like ‘beautiful morning, beautiful morning’ over and over. It drives me nuts, and it’s on a loop, repeating itself with the same other songs. Dang.”

Her customer said, “Yeah, that must get tiresome.”

I started to feel a bit nostalgic, thinking how much I still enjoyed the song, even though it wasn’t being sung by Gordon MacRae, who played Curly in the 1955 film. It’s always his voice I hear when I think of Oklahoma.

I can see how it might become insufferable to hear the same songs piping in over and over again at your place of work, or anywhere, for that matter. Then I kind of envied her for being able to listen to music at work. In any event, it’s been a fine morning so far.