Eavesdropping
27-Mar-04
I came to Abouche to edit my novel, but instead am doing a bit of much-needed peoplewatching.
There’s a guy at the table next to me who has spent the last hour (at least– since I got here) talking on the phone. Not to any single person; he’s made probably six or seven calls in the last fifty minutes. He’s calling about church-related things, telling people where the church is and catching up with some people. It sounds like he’s either new in town, or inviting people who are unfamiliar with Scotts Valley into town. I think he’s organizing a non-profit project in our community to focus on human network concerns (guysinc.net and humaninc.net). He has two Bibles and a dictionary on his table, and is wearing a Race for the Cure t-shirt. Someone close to him had a baby recently. I know this because I’m an unapologetic eavesdropper and people-watcher.
We have a Bible college here in Scotts Valley, so Bible students and members of the clergy are not uncommon in my favorite haunts. Sometimes they are very interesting to eavesdrop on. There’s a group of four ministers who have breakfast a few times a week at the Bagel Cafe. They talk about interesting stuff, but I think sometimes they’re getting sidetracked from planning their sermons or lessons, and end up talking about our community (interestingly, I rarely overhear them chatting politics).
I’ve also seen a few coordination meetings between the fire departments of Scotts Valley and the other departments in our county at the Bagel Cafe. I suspect it’s more palatable to have such meetings when there’s good coffee and an abundance of bagels. Also, it’s probably a convenient place to stop on the way to or from work. In any case, there are never more than three or four of these gentlemen there, and they’re always polite, so always welcome.
At the coffeestand, there’s a woman who is about a size four. She poured sugar from the sugar container into her coffee, in a steady stream, for several seconds. My guess on the volume of sugar she just put into her 8 ounce cup of coffee is 3 tablespoons. Can you imagine swallowing three tablespoons of sugar?
And then there’s me. The girl wearing a long-sleeved LiveJournal t-shirt and jeans, even though it’s seventy-five degrees outside. I’m a little pudgy, and have been drinking a latte from a glass mug for the past hour. If you were to people-watch me, you would say that I’m making very infrequent notes in a notebook in between typing into a window on my laptop computer. It’s a Mac, and it’s not plugged in. I use a purple fine-point pen. I have the table turned sideways, so it is wider than it is long, giving me space for my laptop and my notebook and folders. There are two well-roughed folders next to me underneath the notebook. I took out the entire, typed contents of one of these folders and set it on top of the empty folder when I sat down. At that time, I also dropped a paperclip, which I have not yet picked up from the floor. Every fifteen minutes or so, I switch to my web browser and go to this green-colored website and poke around at it before going back to whatever I was tapping away at. I also look helplessly at the top page of the typed contents of that folder before going back to work. Clearly, whatever notes and planning I have done so far are insufficient to the task I’m trying to accomplish.