Ding.
Can’t they see when someone waltzes through the door, or do they need the sound to reassure their sight?
Once stepping through the entrance, you are immediately enveloped in the sweet aroma of roasting coffee beans and chai spice. It’s quite hard to tune out the civilization that has accumulated in this small urban watering hole. So I listen. Why not? It’s not like they’re trying to hush their voices.
The soft chattering of housewives getting in line for their 6-pump vente-skim chai tea latte on their way to drop of the kids at day care then travel back to their suburban sanctuaries to watch TiVo-recorded Martha Stewart from yesterday.
I hear clamorous laughter of university students in the back booth, as they finish their lit papers due in two hours for a class that bores them to tears. They’ll need to be as caffeinated as those espressos can get them for the three hour seminar on China’s political policies and how that ties in with their economy.
Ding. Little, beeping monster…
At this time, the door has announced the grand arrival of a downtown business man. Mid-thirties, tall, blond scruff slicked back for an important meeting allowing him to kiss up in a corporate boardroom.
Phil. Let’s call him Phil.
Phil orders a coffee. Black. I wonder why he doesn’t just make it at home. Instead he must feel a nagging impulse to stop at a coffee house well out of his way, wait in line behind a hardcore morning runner (Lisa) for 3 minutes while she decides whether or not to get skim or not. Lisa orders a coffee. Black.
Only after Phil has added enough sugar and cream to make his coffee-black, more of a brownish-yellow, can he proceed in spilling the piping hot mixture onto Lisa, walking out the door. After many napkins, apologies and words I’m not allowed to use in public, both Phil and Lisa crash through the door, one without coffee and one wearing it.
Ding. I’m going to break it, the electronic devil.
Well this turned out to be much more entertaining than I thought. I shut my Windows Vista laptop on my table for two and put it in my bag, take one last sip of my own Chai and throw it away at the condiments table. Taking one last glance at the dimly lit room where I spent my morning pondering the human mind, I decide that I’m not one to judge. I walk out the door.
Ding- Seriously?