Restlessness

There’s some­thing to be said about sit­ting in a cof­fee shop, sip­ping a latté, read­ing a book, and tak­ing the time every now and then to notice the var­i­ous cus­tomers who walk in the door. There are quite a few cof­fee shops in the down­town area close to where I live. Star­bucks, of course, being one of them. It’s inter­est­ing see­ing who walks in.

The older gen­tle­man who sat down next to me, for exam­ple. He had an olive fedora-of-sorts (I’m not an expert in hat types), a darker olive green coat, and is hav­ing the oat­meal as he reads some emails he has printed up.

The lady in the cute red shirt sit­ting at the bar. She’s read­ing the comics, and has her cof­fee for here.

The middle-aged cou­ple, in their match­ing sporty win­ter jack­ets, sort­ing out their famil­ial finances.

The older lady with the sil­ver hair cut into a longer bob with the grown out fringe — she’s dressed all in black, has been here for longer than I have, and looks like she leads a busy, and excit­ing social life.

Then, there’s me. If I were a stranger doing the watch­ing, I’d see a stu­dent dressed in a con­tra­dic­tory out­fit (casual but the outer lay­ers def­i­nitely not), on her iPhone prob­a­bly tex­ting a friend, with a novel opened up to a page that hasn’t been read in awhile.

I like to imag­ine up lives for the peo­ple who pass me by in the street or notice in cof­fee shops.