I promised the Dunkin’ Donuts girl I would write about her.

It’s fair enough, I suppose. I start most of my days there, coming in out of the deep, dark woods to sit on a curb in the parking lot to daydream and suck down coffee.

Regular coffee, that is. If you ever see me ordering a latte, French vanilla or a triple caramel anything, feel free to kick me square in the Dunkaccino.

I do my best thinking on the curb at Dunkin’ Donuts. Half of the stuff I write over the course of my day was at least conceived there. Story leads written in my head, plot snarls tugged into  sense while I’m sitting and sipping and watching dragonflies mate on a blade of grass.

Dunkin’ Donuts is where I take the first look at the day’s emotional barometer.

Inside, I don’t have to think at all. Precoffee, my brain can’t manage the complexities of the menu, so the donut girl chooses for me.

“You don’t want a Boston creme today.”

“I don’t?”

“No. You want fall harvest, the one with the bright orange frosting.”

“I do?”

“Yes, you do. And you shouldn’t ride your motorcycle anymore until the rain stops.”

“I shouldn’t?”

And with my head uncluttered by the small things, I’m free to work on bigger things in the parking lot. Came up with the math linking quantum mechanics to relativity one day, you know, but I forgot to write it down.

I will never find such clarity at a place like Starbucks, where patrons are expected to do all their thinking through laptop computers or smart phones. Tim Hortons doesn’t do it for me because the aromas there remind me of a school cafeteria, and I’ve been haunted by thoughts of the school cafeteria since the incident.

I’ve got to have Dunkin’ Donuts, you see, or my life is in disarray. When the apocalypse finally comes down, it’s one of the things I’ll miss the most as I stumble cold and starving across the scorched earth.

“You know what I miss?” I’ll say to my imaginary friends. “Dunkin’ Donuts, that’s what. If I could just sit there in the parking lot, with something picked out by the donut girl, everything would be all right again. Say, are you going to eat that guy’s foot?”

I promised the skinny guy I would write about his latest aggravation. The beanpole wandered up to me the other day (I didn’t see him at all at first because he was turned sideways) to complain about the irony of plus-size people making fun of scrawny folks.

“So, I’m talking to an old friend and she’s going on and on about how skinny I am. She’s calling me a pinrod, a stick, a twig. Asks me if I’m anorexic and all that crap. Meanwhile, she’s probably 50 pounds overweight and can you imagine if I pointed out that fact? If a skinny person calls a fat person a blimp, a load, a cow or a tubbard, there would be hell to pay. Yet they do it to us all the time. What’s up with that?”

I don’t know what’s up with that, Slim. There does seem to be a double standard where weight is concerned, but what are you going to do? Confront heavyset people? Good luck, Scarecrow. That’s a good way to get eaten.

I can’t do much to soothe my emaciated friend other than to offer up some other terms for the very narrow. Skeleton, Boobs on a Stick, Snake Hips, Bones, Q-Tip with Eyes, Hobknocker, Stretch, Kate Moss, Pipe Cleaner and Ichabod.

Hope that helps.

So, I couldn’t get a column out of Ichabod’s irritation but I wrote it down anyway, just like I jotted down the Dunkin’ Donuts idea. You can see it right there in my notebook, scribbled in my elegant style that makes it appear my notebook was stuck outside during a rain of ink: “Fat versus skinny. Whose more annoying?”

I have dozens — nay hundreds! — of notebooks filled with words and phrases such as these. Ideas muttered by friends, associates and weirdos on the street. “My cat uses the toilet,” and “my son is a cross-dresser” and “please call for help, I’m stuck in a well.”

Yada, yada, yada. Who can remember them all?

The point I’m trying to make is that I’m blessed and also cursed in having a column that follows no particular path. If I was a political writer, I’d be enthralling you with a studied analysis of the race for governor. If I was an education reporter, I’d be wowing you with my thoughts on reading, writing and . . . whatever that third thing is. If I was a sports writer, I’d be sullen and drunk most of the time.

Instead, I have this open topic thing going on and all these column inches to fill each week. And so I jot down every idea that comes my way and the result is a virtual city block worth of notebooks crammed full of seemingly inane thoughts.

Should I perish suddenly someday, investigators and inconvenienced family members might go through my notebooks looking for clues to my demise. I hope they are guided to the truth through such awesome clues as: “Bananas are gross,” “Interpreting stomach growls” and “Eating one’s own hand. Possible?”

Just go to Dunkin’ Donuts, my saddened friends. You’ll clear your mind out there in the parking lot and it will all begin to make sense.