Coffee shops are interesting places. I’m sitting in one trying to write but the people around me are far more interesting. I purposefully sat amongst a crowd of people because a) it affords me an opportunity to observe people, and b) it is less awkward than sitting in a corner alone. Let me introduce you to the cast of characters filling this particular coffee shop. To my right is a father and daughter pair. He appears to be helping his daughter with her school work. Grammar and spelling are all well and  good but what I find more interesting is the snippets of conversation between homework problems. He’s asking his daughter about her mother, presumably his ex-wife. He’s asking her things bout what the mother has said. When he does it makes his daughter noticeably awkward. From the way he talks it seems that the breakup was fairly recent or that it is ongoing. I want to tell him to shut up and leave his daughter out of it.  He doesn’t need to make it worse by making her choose sides. It is not fair to drag his daughter into the petty disagreements between him and his ex-spouse. It is already a painful and awkward time for her. The two have just left, I’m trying not to listen to their conversation too intently but one last thing stood out to me as the girl gathered her things to go. She made some comment that I didn’t catch but then she added the phrase “no offense” after it. When you feel it necessary to add the phrase “no offense” after a comment it is most often because the preceding comment was offensive, and you are trying to absolve your self of responsibility for it. There are a couple of things that are odd about what she said a) when did kids, who are clearly in middle school, learn to sat “no offense” and b) what kind of parent allows their kid to talk to them like that with nary and admonishment? Man  parenting sure isn’t what it was when I was a kid, but that’s a subject for another time and place.

Let’s move on shall we? There is a woman sitting directly behind the pair that just left, she is a middle-aged overweight lady. From the moment she sat down she stood out. Everything about her is big. That’s the only way I can describe it. Her hair, her earrings, her dress, all big. Not only did she stand out physically but she also has a big voice. She has answered her cell phone several times and even if she didn’t have an obnoxious ring tone, her conversations would still be distracting. That is because she speaks in a loud high pitched voice that grates on the ears. Everyone around her is speaking in hushed voices so her voice penetrates the quiet much the way the first rays of light disrupt the morning darkness.  As she is jabbering away the only thing that would be more annoying would be if she were talking on one of those abhorrent bluetooth headsets. Thankfully, she is not. As she talks she blankly flips through a magazine with a large photo of Robert Pattinson staring out from the cover. An annoying middle aged woman reading a magazine about Twilight, let me count the things wrong with this scene.

There are of course other folks in the coffee shop. There is the creepy old guy that looks more at the other folks than the magazine laid out in front of him. He then conveniently finds a reason to leave moments after the father and daughter leave. Draw your own conclusions. There is the gaggle of school girls with their hushed giggles and innocent smiles. The guy buried in his laptop oblivious to those around him. Then of course there are the baristas behind the counter, yelling out orders and happily gossiping to each other. They move from work to conversation as effortlessly as a bird soars over the earth. Then enters what I submit is the most interesting character there. He is an old man wizened with age and hardship. He hobbles over to a vacant table his cane doing precious little good helping him navigate the forest of furniture. As he sits down my mind can’t help but wonder who is this man? What kind of a life has he lead and what sights have those eyes seen? Does he have a family at home worried as he clings onto his fading independence? It is easy to imagine an extensive backstory for this man I will never know.

The coffee shop does provide a wealth of interesting characters and I have been here barely twenty minutes. We so often don’t really look at the people inhabiting the world around us. They briefly intersect our lives and then as quickly as they appear they are gone. Each person leaving as unchanged by our presence as we are by theirs. We might as well be miles apart. Alone in a crowd is certainly the loneliest one can ever be. Surrounded by people but unnoticed. Our presence unimportant to anyone save ourselves.