One Thing or Another

Funny How Things Work Out

One Thing

I shifted from foot to foot. Checked the time on my iPhone obsessively, as if time were moving at a faster clip than usual. I huffed. I puffed.

“What’s the difference between a latte and a flat white? And how big is a grande?” A Starbucks neophyte slowed the normally smooth-flowing line and threatened my ability to arrive at my appointment on time. With coffee. My eyes rolled. I sighed.

“You go ahead of me,” said the gentleman who stood between me and the noob. “I can see you’re in a rush.” And I thought my expressions of frustration were so subtle.

“No, no,” I dissembled. Demurred. Denied. “Thank you. It’s ok.”

“It IS ok, really. I can tell you have somewhere to be. I don’t; I’m in no rush.”

“Thank you.” I acquiesced. Agreed. Accepted.

The coffee bar newbie finally stepped aside after an epic ordering effort. The exhausted barista smiled at me. “The usual?”

“Yes, please,” I said, and nodded back toward the good Samaritan, “and whatever he is having.”

_________

Or Another

I am waiting for my sister on a Sunday midmorning at a crowded local cafe. It’s crammed with customers and crescendoing with cacophony. Teeming tots scream into the void making their anguish apparent to all of us, but giving no indication of its source. A Greek chorus of two-year-olds with existential angst.

Parents try increasingly urgently to quell the caterwauling, but their desperation only adds to the din and my distress. Among other symptoms of anxiety, I enjoy the torture of misophonia: “a condition that causes people to have strong emotional and physiological reactions to certain sounds.” It threatens, at this moment, to turn me into one of those nasty old people who seem apparently to have forgotten what it’s like to want to just get the hell out of the house in the depths of winter for a quick brunch with other adult people despite the military-level maneuvering required to get the littles outfitted and out.

I consider walking outside just to let the sub-freezing air smack me in the face and bring me back to my senses, when I notice a sweet, even older couple at the table next to mine. They sit together, not opposite one another, on the padded banquette, watching the melee with serene, detached composure. They neither smile adoringly nor frown disapprovingly. Shifting my attention to them breaks the stranglehold the hubbub has on my head.

He (Barry Piels, to whom I promised a full citation) turns slowly to his wife; sensing the swivel she meets his gaze. “That’s what happens when you have sex,” he says, gesturing toward the boisterous Cheerio wars. She nods and pats his hand. Nary another word passes between them. They sit and stare in synchronous solidarity.

This priceless bon mot serves to reroute the chemical impulses in my brain from near rage to uproarious laughter, and my sister arrives.