Please pay attention. There WILL be a quiz.

Starbucks recently took out a two-page, fold-out, super-slick ad in some magazines to educate us benighted, Folgers-swilling plebes on "The Art of Espresso + Milk."

Using a chart only slightly less complex than the Periodic Table of the Elements (for instance, it did not list Barium or Neptunium), it showed a sort of timeline of coffee concoctions, starting with:

Doppio: "Two shots of espresso. Straight."

Latte Macchito: "Foamed whole milk marked with shots of espresso."

Flat White: "Sweet ristretto espresso shots finished with whole steamed milk."

Cappuccino: "A shot of espresso topped with a deep layer of foamed milk"

And, but of course: Caffee Latte —"A shot of espresso in steamed milk lightly topped with foam."

Got that? OK, quick: Which drink dumps a shot of espresso into a cup of foamed barium?

Ah, just yankin' your chain. That's at Dunkin Donuts. As for the Starbucks chart, I didn't even give you all the concoctions on the list, to prevent your head from exploding like an overheated doppio ristretto machine. (Didn't Ristretto start out by making a boy out of wood? Or am I confused?)

Anyway, after all this, the ad explained as if to a dim bulb: "Latte Macchiato: Foamed milk marked with espresso makes it intensely bold." OK. While, "Flat White," which is — as you'll immediately recall — sweet ristretto espresso finished with blah blah blah is "rich & velvety."

Never mind that the pictures of these two ostensibly polar opposite drinks look about as unsimilar as those "Spot the difference!" puzzles you do while waiting for a Greyhound Bus.

Which perhaps explains why the ad is driving me to drink something stronger than a latte macchiato. (Or was it a cafe latte?) What I mean is: I'm drinking grain alcohol mixed with Mountain Dew. You see, here's a company that already asks us to fork over all our cash previously reserved for necessities like medicine and HBO just to drink some scorched caffeine in a pseudo-chatty place where everyone is actually on their phone, staring at their laptops and hogging the seat next to them.

And now, for us not to sound like idiots there — "I'd like a coffee with milk, please" — we have to study gradations between coffee drinks more subtle than the ones between flatworms and tapeworms. (Do NOT go look these up! Or, at least, do not click on "images.")

Starbucks has already amused itself by training us to say, "Tall," when we mean "Small" — tall being the littlest cup of coffee you can get without whittling yourself a mug on the spot. So if you need more help with Starbucks-ese, here's my handy translation chart:

Cafe Espresso Frappucino. Translation: milkshake

Vanilla Frappucino. Translation: vanilla milkshake

Caramel Flan Frappucino. Translation: gloppy milkshake

Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappucino. Translation: crunchy milkshake

Double Chocolaty Chip Frappucino. Translation: shameless milkshake

Hazelnut Frappucino. Translation: milkshake for high-income squirrels

Shaken Sweet Tea. Translation: tea with sugar. Duh. And someone who isn't you got paid (and health care, too!) to shake it.

Caffe Americano, by the way, simply means coffee. But since it's Starbucks, the literal translation is: coffee the Americanos pay grande bucks for.

Lenore Skenazy is author of the book and blog, "Free-Range Kids," and a keynote speaker at conferences, companies and schools. Her TV show, "World's Worst Mom" airs on the Discovery Life Channel. To find out more about Lenore Skenazy (Lskenazy@yahoo.com) and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Elliott Brown