This weekend, a church in Hurst will host a training seminar for a new state law that lets churches arm members of the congregation instead of hiring off-duty police or private security.

A minister is one of the people leading the seminar. He emailed me a few days ago.

We started coordinating our schedules to meet for an interview. This is a common exchange when I’m meeting someone who’s not going to be at work: they’ll ask if I want to come by their house. I’ll ask if there’s a Starbucks nearby, and we can meet there. I feel like showing up at someone’s house is intrusive. I don’t want people to think a gang of street toughs will pull up outside their house in a WBAP car. Sure, this particular minister was also a retired police officer, but maybe he would have felt threatened by my chiseled physique.

I’ve spent a lot of time in Starbucks during my career, even though I’ve never, technically, bought anything there.

When I lived in the Pacific Northwest, the station where I worked in Hermiston had a give-away where businesses would enter and, once a week, we’d pull a name, they’d order coffee and I’d deliver it with one of the sales people.

So the saleswoman and I would call in the order to Starbucks [or some other coffee joint. Now that I think of it, there were coffee joints all over town in the Pacific Northwest and, at the risk of sounding coffee-ist, they all looked the same to me], pick it up and deliver it to an office.

When we’d walk in, I had a standard line [sorry, Hermiston, Oregon office workers. I was a real floozie with this line. I hope you didn’t think I only used it in your office.]: Are you excited to see me or the coffee?

One secretary, and this really happened, looked up as she started sorting the drinks and said, quite matter-of-factly, “Oh, well, both.” I won three Edward R. Murrow Awards when I worked in Hermiston, and that’s what I remember about my time there.

I have used Starbucks for wi-fi, though. After the explosion in West, I must have forgotten the air card for my laptop one day, so I pulled into a Starbucks along the interstate. I didn’t want to go inside and look like some guy who goes to Starbucks just to use wi-fi, so I drove around slowly outside [like a street tough] to find the exact place where I could park and keep a strong wi-fi signal while still sitting in the car.

When I walked into the Starbucks in Hurst to find the minister, it was packed with Those Guys Who Go To Starbucks Just to Use Wi-Fi. They were just lined up at the counter and at tables with “earbuds” in, I assume editing their can’t-miss music demo [baroque-punk fusion].

Then, I didn’t feel so bad about never buying anything. I can’t imagine any of them had ever bought anything, either.

The minister and I sat outside. We talked for about 15 minutes about violence at churches. This part isn’t funny, where he said 720 people had died from violence on the grounds of a church since 1999.

That led to us talking about how a church, because of the message of inclusion, might become the target of someone who had given up or was deranged. That, in turn, led to him talking about the shooting in Charleston a couple years ago.

My network had sent me to South Carolina to cover the shooting. Just as I was telling the minister about how powerful it was that all these churches of different faiths rang their bells at the same time in a show of support, a woman spotted my microphone and tried to sell us some face cream. To her credit, that lightened the mood substantially.

In fact, after the interview, the minister and I discussed this face cream situation for several minutes, though, much like Starbucks, we didn’t actually buy anything. I do have her card, though, in case anyone needs some face cream for some reason.

During this legislative session, I can think of four other times I met someone for an interview outside a Starbucks. Maybe this special session was cooked up by Starbucks. Starbucks is behind all this, funding both sides of the bathroom bill debate and property tax reform [if you read the property tax bill closely, it contains a provision that sets the tax rate for all land containing a Starbucks at zero percent]. They’re trying to keep me booking interviews at their locations even though I don’t drink coffee and have not spent any money there.

Think about it, people!