Our class took a trip to the Roundabout Theatre to see a preview of a play called “The Counter.” The play features a barista, Katie, and an old customer, Paul, who begin interacting beyond coffee. Paul asks to be friends with Katie, which strikes me because I don’t believe you can be friends with somebody you don’t know much about. I can imagine that Katie was surprised as well. Paul understands the idea that you cannot be friends without revealing deep secrets about each other, so he starts to reveal that he is an alcoholic, and he becomes categorized as somebody who is depressed. Katie begins to open up about leaving her home, and her ex(friend?) to run away from the life she had when she had a hysterectomy. Paul and Katie begin to clash, as they both have different opinions about Katie running away. I enjoy the irony in this because while they have different opinions, they are not so different themselves.

Later, Paul asks Katie to kill him and surprise him. This is not explicitly mentioned, but I interpret it as Paul trying to run away from his issues by ending it, while he condemns Katie for running away. Katie does not want to deal with people’s pity of her having a hysterectomy while Paul does not want to deal with everybody else’s pity of him taking care of his mother and brother until they passed away. At this point in the play, I started to tear up, I felt as if I could sympathize with the characters even though the play is fictional. After much more talking, Katie’s problems seemed to follow her into her new home, as her ex-friend (who knows about the hysterectomy and hurts her emotionally) found her address and is going to see her. Paul tells her she has to go and move elsewhere to protect her peace. From once disagreeing with each other to understanding each other with talks over the countertop,  the moral of this is you cannot make assumptions that everybody doesn’t understand how you feel. People will never understand the full extent of how you feel. But they may understand the principle of the situation. Had Paul and Katie not given each other a chance, we probably wouldn’t have been met with the resolution of Katie and Paul both attempting to protect their peace in the end.

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