The world is a wild and terrible wasteland of misery and cruelty. It’s a cold, hard, loveless machine trudging towards “progress” without regard for the little gears grinding to bits at its heart.
There are two ways to deal with this truth. One is to grind your way to the surface, and supervise the poor saps unfortunate enough not to make it. Another is to find a couple gears you don’t mind grinding beside and spend your life with them.
I have no heart for the first option. It takes a gall I can’t imagine to live on another’s suffering. My choice is to find a little ring of friends to join and breathe easy for a little while before it’s over.
I’ve just had a really hard time finding that ring of friends.
A week ago I walked into a coffee shop. You have no idea how unusual that is for me. First of all, I live in a small town in midwest Michigan. There aren’t any coffee shops in walking distance, and I’m not wasting gas money to go waste more money on drinks I don’t like and can’t afford in a place whose atmosphere makes my head spin. Suffice it to say I’m not a coffee shop kinda guy.
To save you the asking, I was there because my boss wanted a coffee that bad. I’ll go buy my boss a coffee if I’m getting paid for it. So yeah, that’s why. My plan was to walk in, read the sticky note on the back of my hand to the—what is it, barista or something?—pay, and get out before I was bleeding The Dashboard Confessional out of my ears.
“Hi,” is what she said. The... barista... lady. Just after walking in I tripped over a patron’s Macbook cord and had to catch myself on the counter. In the process of stumbling my way in front of the register, I must have brushed the back of my hand across something, because when I arrived the sticky note had disappeared. So I must have looked like I was drunk or drugged or both by my deer in the headlights expression and staggered stance. And she said “hi” with all the judgment of one of those blood pressure machines.
Her name was Fen. Or at least that’s what was on her nametag thing. God knows how people love to put weird things on their name tags.
In response to my blank stare, Fen drummed her fingers in triplets. She didn’t seemed bothered at all. If I had my guess, she would just have preferred to have a glass in her hands. “Hi,” she said again.
I droned out an ummmmm and finally mimicked her “hi.” She gave the slightest of smirks.
I looked down quickly at the back of my hand. I thought my boss just wanted black coffee with two creams. That was all. Right?
Fen’s eyes flickered towards the door. She drummed out a triplet again. Hummed out a line of Vindicated. Stepped to the side, snatched something, and stepped back. I was just starting to look up when she slapped my sticky note back onto my hand.
“Mocha twist’ll be right out,” she said. “Does your boss know we deliver?”
I forced a chuckle. “She might.”
Fen smiled. “Just gimme an address and she doesn’t have to know.”
Basically, that’s Fen for you. She gets out of her job for twenty minutes to deliver a dozen coffees to my work, and spends about five of that talking to me about whatever. And I guess that’s what I’m writing this blog about. This weird girl I met in a coffee shop once.
I’ll keep you posted.
