Traumatic pearl milk tea experience scars sophomores

Pearl milk tea runs in our veins.

On a tough test day, PMT is the answer to all of those blank Scantron bubbles. On a blazing hot day, it will satisfy all your cold drink cravings and save you from going to Starbucks. On a cold winter day, it will melt all your worries away and offer that warm hug that your nonexistent boyfriend wouldn’t give. The opportunities are endless.

It can also get you lost on the streets, desperately searching for safety.

Our unfortunate story begins on a dark December night. After scrolling through countless Tpumps Instagram posts, the two of us and sophomore Jenny Qian decided to quench our thirst and give the place a go.

After choosing our drinks and waiting for 10 minutes, we finally received our drinks and blissfully took the subsequent Snapchat and Instagram photos.

Spring, craving cream puffs to complement her sugar high,  persuaded us to walk the seemingly petty 0.2 miles to the nearby Cupertino plaza, the Marketplace. After plugging the location into our trusty Google Maps app and seeing that it would only take five minutes to reach there, we were convinced that it would be a worthwhile trip.

Let’s just say that the walk did not take “five minutes.”

While happily sipping our drinks, Eileen pointed out which streets to cross; as we continued walking, we found that the streets were getting darker, and the miles stretching longer.

Twenty minutes into our creepy walk toward what seemed like the middle of nowhere, Eileen came to the realization that she put in the wrong address into her phone.

After turning 180° and headed in the right direction, we faced two shadowy figures who turned out to be boys a little older than us. A beer in each hand, the boys, in  slurred speech, demanded that we empty our pockets and give them our spare cash. We retorted with a blatant “No!” and fast-walked past them, trying to avoid eye-contact.

After 10 minutes of crossing multiple streets and holding onto each other for dear life, we turned around and found the two boys trailing a couple steps behind.

Panicking, the three of us law-following pedestrians frantically pounded on the traffic light’s button to cross the street. As the red hand turned into the blessed white stick-figure, we sprinted across the crosswalk (dropping our now-warm and watery PMT’s), which led to a brightly-lit Beard Papa’s. All the while, Jenny was swearing under her breath, “I SEE THE LIGHT!”

Crying on the inside — and somewhat on the outside — we dashed to the entrance and were met with the aroma and safety of warm vanilla cream puffs.

We finally found our safe haven and spent the rest of the night with the pastries, our dead iPhones and a confused cashier.

Maybe we are just wimpy little Saratoga kids who can’t handle a couple of drunk strangers outside “the bubble.” Maybe there just needs to be more streetlamps in Cupertino. Maybe those strangers just wanted our PMT. But our takeaway is this: THE HYPE IS NOT WORTH THE EXPERIENCE. Sorry Tpumps; you failed us.