She is tall, probably 5’ 10” or more. Her face shows the years, and I would guess
her age to be in the early to mid 60s range.
While you probably couldn’t pick her out of a line up, she does wear
bright teal shorts with a matching T-shirt.
She doesn’t so much walk around the store, as shuffles, quickly moving
from one table to another as she tries to determine exactly where she wants to
sit.
Our interactions in the past have been brief. While I sit at the end of the one long table
waiting on friends, she would come up to me and take an interest in my
computer. She asks me if it is a Mac. I reply with a yes. She asks how much it costs. I give her a ballpark figure. She is genuinely interested, and tells me
that it’s nice and walks off to order her beverage of choice.
However, this Saturday is different. She arrives with an older woman, later
identified as her mother. She is caring
toward her mother, who is probably in her 80s, and can’t walk so well. They order their favorite coffee creations
and sit in the comfy chairs a few feet from where I am working. I don’t listen to their random chitchat, but
within a few minutes they are leaving the store.
This was not the end of her Starbucks day though. Just two minutes later she reenters the store
without her mother. She chats with
another gentleman who holds regular office hours at the store. They even go out to enjoy a cigarette
together. It was after this when my
Saturday would become surreal. It would
be the beginning of a wild experience I will not soon forget.
Ok, so let me pause for a moment and say that while I am
usually not the most patient person in the room, I also don’t care to make a
scene in a public place when it really isn’t warranted. I am pretty good at multitasking, and if I
need to, I can let people chat while I type away doing whatever it is I need to
do. I catch most of what they are
saying, and even respond from time to time.
Sometimes people just need to talk.
The woman walks back into Starbucks and comes straight at
me. She once again repeats the encounter
we have had before. She asks about my
computer, wonders its cost, and then walks back to where she left her
drink. However, that was not the
end. A few minutes later she returned to
my table, and took a seat right next to me.
She took another look at my computer and told me that it was
a shame about Steve Jobs. She let me
know that he was a young man, who was probably about my age. I didn’t think I looked that old. Mr. Jobs died when he was 56.
I could say something.
I could tell the lady that I am waiting on a friend and that I need to
get some work done before she arrives. I
could leave and come back. I could go to
the bathroom, hoping that when I come back she would have left. I didn’t though. I stayed, and I learned a lot about this
woman and her life. Here are some things
I did not know.
· Her father knew Elvis Presley. She asked her dad to invite him over to
dinner, and when he came to the house he fix her eyesight. It turned out that Elvis became an
Ophthalmologist while he was in the Army.
·
She worked at the highest level as a civilian in
the Defense Commissary Agency. When I say highest level, I mean the equivalent
to a General.
·
Her father was Dwight D. Eisenhower, which could
explain how she met Elvis.
·
She dated Bobby Kennedy, whom her father liked
despite his Democrat affiliation. She
refused to let Bobby into the White House until he bought and wore a bulletproof
vest. (Eerie)
·
She is a
Doctor, Lawyer and Lifeguard
·
She runs sound for Kenny Rogers during all of
his concerts. She loves doing it,
however, he is very rude and she has had to tell him to “Never talk to me that
way again” on more than one occasion.
·
She has more money than God, however, Obama is
spending it all wrong. (She also said
that she could pay off the National Debt)
…and last but not least
·
She gave her a phone number that I am to call
for free Kenny Rogers tickets on May 9th. She will get us backstage to meet him and
after the show will fly us to West Palm Beach on her private plane. I had to unfortunately say no since we will
already be in Florida on vacation.
Of course, since I have my computer I am using Google to
verify all of this information as it is coming out. I mean, I guess Elvis could have gotten some
eye training in the Army. I didn’t know
if Eisenhower had a daughter. It’s
possible to be a doctor and a lawyer and a lifeguard. And Bobby Kennedy probably had a girlfriend
at some point.
None of it was true of course, as I suspected from the
beginning. She is just a lady with a few
facts confused and who knows the life that she has lived up until this
point. I concluded that she doesn’t have
a lot of interaction with a lot of people and decided that interaction with me
was better than sitting alone. Over the
course of an hour she got up two or three times to go smoke and then would come
back, tell me she would only stay for a minute and continue these fantastical
stories of her past. It was strange, but
nothing prepared me for what was to come.
Like, I said earlier, I had brought a Large Coke Zero into
the coffee shop with me. This is not
unusual, as I do it on most days. I
don’t drink a lot of coffee and like soda better. Plus, I am normally with 2 or 3 folks who
order something, and let’s face it, Heather and my mother have spent small
fortunes on Grande, Skinny, White Chocolate Mochas over the years, so I don’t feel
bad about using their WiFi for a few hours.
If the tables were full and they needed the space, I would leave, but
they don’t, so I stay.
My cup sits next to the left side of my computer. This also happened to be next to the seat
where this stranger had take residence.
After all of these stories, after all the fantasy, I guess she needed to
put a cherry on top, so she grabbed my soda cup and started playing with the
straw. I was watching this in horror,
wondering if now was the time to say something.
Was now the time to stand up and ask her to leave? Was now the time to call her on her
bullshit? Was now the time to set her
straight? Since the cup was mostly
empty, I decided to let it go.
Then, as I was looking down, still typing away at whatever I
had deemed to be the distraction I needed to the reality that was becoming my
day, I saw what in the back of my head I knew was coming. She took a sip of my soda. She wrapped her mouth around that straw and
slurped up the remnants of my Coke Zero and melted ice. I just kept typing, my brain repeating some
line from a movie I can’t remember, “You can mess with my woman, but don’t you
dare mess with my Coke Zero.”
Still, I remained calm.
She immediately realized her mistake and apologized. I told her it was ok and kept typing. She kept at the apology as if she had just
run over my dog, and I kept reassuring her that I was finished with the
drink. (I was finished as soon as she
touched the straw.) She was truly
repentant, and I was truly ready for her to leave. I couldn’t go since my friend would be there
any minute. Still, I held my
tongue.
Finally, my friend arrived and this enigma of a person left
the table. She did come over one more
time to make sure that I would call for the free meet and greet, but our
interaction that day was over. I did my
business, and left Starbucks wondering just what that was all about. It’s not every day that a stranger comes to
your table, tells you that Elvis gave her Lasik, and drinks your Coke
Zero. I was just lucky I guess.
In all of this I am trying to find so lesson, some moral
that will help me to invoke some brilliant words of wisdom. I mean, I could write about how we should all
be nice to people. I could pontificate
about how just listening to this woman could have made her day a little bit
brighter. I could muse about treating
her how I want to be treated because that is the right thing to do, but I think
we all know all that. There has to be
something more.
And there is. Of
course, there is. It wouldn’t be
complete unless there was something more, and here it goes. In my life as Mr. Army Wife, I meet all kinds
of people. I mean ALL KINDS OF
PEOPLE. They each have their own special
abilities, talents, personalities, and quirks.
They each feel, think, love, and believe different things. AND, and this is a big one, all of them have
their own level of crazy. I am not
saying this stranger was insane, I am merely saying that we all live in our own
worlds at times, where the truth of our existence and the fantasy that we believe
can become clouded and blurred in a mess that becomes our lives.
When I watch my friends’ children play, I see this example
lived out in its purest form. The little
girls believe they are the Disney Princesses they choose to emulate. The little boys know they are their favorite
sports stars. The reality is that they
are dreaming, imagining a life where the possibilities are endless and the
truth is that they can become whatever their mind dreams up. They can be Spiderman, or Iron Man, or a
fireman. They can be Snow White, or
Aurora, or the first female superhero to get her own stand-alone movie.
Maybe this is where this lady is in life. Maybe she still sees the joy in being related
to a President and dating a young Kennedy.
(There are a lot of women who still dream of this.) Maybe remembering Elvis as a houseguest and
doctor helps her in some way. Maybe
drinking my drink…ok, I have nothing for that, and I’m still not over it.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter in my life
what she believes about hers. I still
got my work done, and I got this great story out of it. She didn’t hurt me or herself or anyone else
around us. She just needed to sit down
and talk. She needed to dream about her
younger days, or maybe what she wished her younger days were right. I think we all need to do that from time to
time.
While I was writing this two days later, she came back to
the Starbucks and sat in the same seat.
She was quieter this time and seemed to realize that I was working on
something important. (Little does she
know…) She bought me some Banana Bread,
made her rounds, and yes, even stuck to her story about Kenny Rogers. Clearly, she lives inside her head, in her
own little world. But if it is a better place to live, then why not? I like living in my head sometimes too.
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