Today, it is pleasant enough to sit outside with my Iced Venti Latte and Strawberry-Banana Yogurt Parfait. My appreciation for the temperate weather is possibly obvious, as I intermittently smile to myself, or perhaps I just look like a fairly-well-dressed lunatic. It matters not, as no one is looking at me. I think. I would be terribly amused if the dude sitting about five feet away from me wearing a Che hat and looking at some elaborate art book was actually stealing glances and would write later in a blog about the woman in the black dress sitting tapping away and smiling into a yogurt.
A little green Sentra stops at the light and the driver, who appears to be about 11, is blaring through her open windows what sounds to me like a Beyonce song. It could very well be some other young woman musical star with a vocoder effect and a substantial hip area; I am not sure. I could yell to the young driver and ask, but she would not hear me anyway, and I would not want to make her late for 5th grade recess.
A cute skinny man with a fade and fashionable stubble wearing a vibrant green t-shirt and brown shorts keeps getting up and down from his seat. He seems to be waiting for someone, and alternates between cool disaffection and irritation. He is glancing around, until his gaze settles on a chattering sparrow. He flicks his cigarette ash toward the bird, and me by proxy, and gets up again. Maybe he stays so skinny by getting up a lot and smoking. He should write a book and get rich.
Coincidentally, a very very very corpulent man whizzes by on a bicycle. He should be smoking.
The sparrow, nonplussed by the ash, brings some sparrow friends over to pick at a piece of Cranberry-Orange Scone that was probably baked just hours ago. I wonder if the man or woman whose job it is every morning to make and bake scones thought, “I have just made a tasty breakfast item that will be soon by tossed to the ground to by eaten by a bird.”
The skinny man’s person never showed up, and he walked away for good, smoking.
You never know how things are going to end up. Unless you are Beyonce. I think she’s got a handle on things.
© Copyright 2008- Marianne Spellman