teeter-totters

for many months -- or maybe for ever? -- this coffee shop has housed a round wooden table that, when provoked, tips so far one way that your hot chocolate spills all over the floor. and usually onto your neighbour's pant leg. (hmmm, sorry...) but it never tips so far as to actually fall down. despite the havoc the table regularly wreaks, the staff hasn't seemed to want to get rid of or replace it. instead, someone one day decided to stick a yellow post-it to the tabletop: careful -- very wobbly! the table proceeded to migrate conspicuously around the room, as people borrowed and rejected it to accommodate their fluctuating needs, (mis)understanding just how wibbly "wobbly" was. eventually, Wobbles was given a permanent home in the far corner. near the vigilant baristas. just below the rotating artwork. there, as long as the table's turned the right way, it can't tip. can't spill any milk. can't send any cookies a-crumbling.

around the same time that the yellow note surfaced, so did a newbie regular. an elderly woman who, without the slightest provocation, perpetually teeters baaack and forth. manoeuvring her cane as best she can. struggling to walk in a straight line. and uncontrollably making contact with every object and person in her path between the coffee shop entrance, the dessert display case, and whichever available table she opts to sit down at. once she's seated, a barista delivers the food she's ordered: here you go, Frances. and, in no time, the coffee goes flying like from the dashboard of a moving, off-road vehicle. and the muffin explodes like sweeps from Mary Poppins chimneys. throughout, Frances -- "free one" (and the first woman in the u.s. cabinet!) -- is absorbed in the newspaper, its pages trembling like pre-storm leaves in her hands.

while she's here, you get the feeling that the rest of the coffee shop is a very tight pair of lungs. (and you can hear a cavernous heartbeat in the background: guh-GUNG...guh-GUNG...) eventually and slowly, Franny lifts herself up and totters out the door, into the taxi she's asked the barista to call. her impromptu dance routine -- complete with props, sound effects, fireworks, and a very attentive audience -- is unorthodox and utterly unapologetic. and, somehow, she never falls down. thank goodness nobody puts Frances in the corner.

and now back to translating...