settling back into the
neighbourhood coffee shop, after being on the road for a couple of weeks (
woo-hoo!) and sick
in bed for a couple of days (
doh!), reminds me
that lots can change in a short period of time. oh, sure, some things stay the same: this no-whip hot chocolate still rocks (even in 35˚C heat), and
Tumbleweed -- currently sporting the disturbingly popular white knee-high + brown sandal ensemble -- is still kicking around. but some other familiar things are noticeably different.
take the art on the back wall,
for instance. whether featuring close-ups of peeved cockatoos or watercolours
of trees on distant hillsides (*cue the violin*), the rotating artwork is
consistently pretty. that's "pretty," as pronounced by a
five-year-old girl who worships pink (the colour, not the
"artist"). by contrast, this week's works are a series
of distorted, abstract images. on the upside, perhaps they suggest that this
clientèle isn't as mainstream as i'd thought! on the downside, nobody should
quit their day job: this stuff's "pretty" ugly.
next: get a load of these Regulars! shouldn't
they, by definition, remain unchanged? instead, they're over there
behaving
irregularly. for one,
there are
three of them here
right now. (i've hardly seen even two in the coffee shop at the same time
before. and, ps, would it have killed them to invite
Professor
FLQ and me to their little
convention?) but far more notable is that each member of today's all-male
cast has the same
yellow
short-sleeved golf shirt on.
atypical, to be sure. plus, it's giving me painful flashbacks to a very bad date (not unlike an evening with the
Snore Sisters...though with fewer opportunities to escape) with a guy whose own yellow golf shirt basically summed up his personality. (eek!) luckily, the shock of this
"what not to wear" episode is tempered, albeit only slightly, by the fact that yellow
is my favourite colour. (phew!)
finally, there is a definite
shift in demographics: three mini-muscled, american eagle, swaggering
twenty-year-olds have just descended upon the table next to me. ta-da! it's the
coffee shop début of
generation
z! and -- oh, goodie! -- it's a double feature: a few minutes later, two of their female peers bounce in and over to the same spot. but the scene that follows proves more perplexing than entertaining:
Girl 1 giggles over to Boy 1, clearly signalling that they're "together" in some way. (Girl 2 looks on, mostly silent, occasionally giggling, and just a tad jealous...like any good sidekick.) B1's response -- some slapdash kiss -- indicates more or less the same togetherness. however, he's focused more on not looking like some kind of a "wuss" in front of his (awkward, chuckling) friends than on being sweet with G1. within moments, B1 and G1 have made vague plans to talk later on, and the Giggle Girls depart. as soon as the duo are out of sight, the trio morph into a 21st-century skater version of the wannabe boys from
Madmen (aka
Pete Campbell & co.): they begin roaring with laughter and, with broad smirks still in tow, rolling their eyes at G1 and taunting Pete.
as it turns out, Pete is totally uninterested in Giggles. as it also turns out, he can't let her in on this bit of information. why's he so tongue-tied? well, he's just in short supply of two round objects that would normally be found dangling loosely from his nether regions. ah, yes. unfortunately, current dating experiences of women of all ages keep pointing to a recurring phenomenon: that, regardless of the girl, many "grown" men are just as "mad" as young Pete. these are the cute/sweet/bright/down-to-earth/original thirty-one -- or forty-one or fifty-nine or seventy-six -- year-old guys who've spent three and a half weeks dating a woman, have initiated plans with her for two months down the road, and have then left for a work weekend in victoria, never to be heard from again. she's disappointed when it doesn't work out, i suppose. (though losing Mr. "Original" can hardly be considered a big deal.) but no notice? no short-and-sweet straight-talk? *sigh*
i guess, hot chocolate and Tumbleweed aren't the only things that endure the test of time, after all.
and now back to translating...
