Guest Blogger:Background Character in a Starbucks®

CloakFest 2005 concludes with our final Guest Blogger. Hailing from Scotland, the recently-engaged FawnDoo of The Boiled Egg of Infinity graces this site with his observations of the microcosm of a coffee shop:

This is a story that takes a little telling, which is no problem: all the good stories do. I don't know any of the characters, their motivations, or what happens to them. All I know is this.

A couple of days ago I was standing in a queue at my local Starbucks®, waiting for someone to serve me (and to digress for a moment, why can't I ask the guy behind the counter for a large cup of coffee? Why do I have to ask the "Barista" for a "grande soy milk half-caf cappuccino, hold the foam"? Is this some weird coffee house code? And foam? Since when did my drink have to have something that sounds and looks flame retardant sprayed on top of it?) and I happened to look around at the people who were in the place at the same time I was. For once I tried to get past that very British thing we have of not looking at anyone around us and basically pretending that we're alone even when we're in the middle of a huge crowd. Ignoring the bright "FAIR TRADE! FAIR TRADE! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PEOPLE, WE MIGHT BE A HUGE RAINFOREST STRIPPING MULTINATIONAL BUT WE CARE!" posters and the ambient "not good enough for the lift music CD" jazz, I chanced to look around and actually *see* the people around me.

Nosey? Maybe. Interesting? Yes.

What struck me most about the people in the place was the mix of moods that radiated out from every person at every table and in every chair. Some were happy, some were sad, some were intense, some looked resigned and some even looked angry. As I moved along the queue, picked up my drink (at least, I think it was my drink, but then again coffee house latin was never my strong suit so I might have walked away with anything) and made my way to my table I caught snatches of conversation, glimpses of moments in other people's worlds.

"I haven't felt like this for a long time..." - this was said by one woman to another as they both leaned in towards one another, clearly speaking of something private and trying to keep anyone from hearing. Anyone who has a good sense of hearing and a blog. Whoops. When you read the sentence like that on screen, it sounds good, the sort of thing you would hear in a romantic movie. The woman saying it was, however, angry. Her hand movements were short, bordering on choppy. Her expression was intense, her voice at a level that suggested she would be SHOUTING TO THE RAFTERS if only all of the people around here were gone. I wonder what she felt? What had made her feel that way again? How does she feel now?

As I passed another table a woman sat back and with a loud sigh announced, "I haven't been in touch with him since Saturday..." She was resigned to whatever had happened. Her shoulders were slouched, her friend looked concerned, and whatever happened since that Saturday had obviously not been a barrel of laughs. Just before her table moved out of my field of vision I noticed a hand moving across the table to her, offering support or maybe just trying to steal her biscotti.

Then I passed someone who has, in my head, since been labeled "Mobile guy". That's not to say he was moving: in fact he was completely still in his chair, sitting alone, staring at his mobile phone. I don't mean glancing, or looking, or checking the time, or anything like that. I mean STARING. Staring like you would if the screen had a ticking clock on it and you could see two wires poking out the bottom into a large rucksack. The guy looked terrified, and he was concentrating on that screen like his life, his soul, his world and his fate depended on it. Was he waiting for a text message from a loved one? A phone call? Something to stop him looking so scared in a coffee house? One thing I know for sure - if it did go off, he looked as if he would have had a heart attack right there on the spot.

You will, dear reader, be pleased to note that at this point I reached my seat and, to indulge in rather course vernacular at this point, I stopped being a nosey bastard and attended to my drink and conversation. Even as I did so though, I still couldn't shake myself from wondering about the stories that were unfolding all around me. Some were obviously traumatic. Some carried a hint of great sadness. One in particular was a mute testament to tension. I sat there in a coffee house, itself within a bookstore, and I was surrounded by stories - but only some of them were on the shelves, safely trapped between covers and furnished with a rounded and complete ending. The others had no such safe containment, no such assurances of happy endings, and were spiraling on and on as I sat there.

I think that we can all sometimes fall into the trap of thinking of ourselves and what happens to us as the centre of the world. I often let things get on top of me: work, worries, minor annoyances, anything and everything really - but what's happening to me is also happening to a million other people up and down this country, and tens of millions across the world. We all have our stories, and like all stories they all feature ups and downs. What sets the heroes apart from the victims is how we handle the plot threads. Sometimes a different perspective is all you need: for me, it was a change from "main character in my own story" to "fat guy in background at coffee shop".

As we left the coffee house, two guys walked in and as they passed us one said to the other, "I'm telling you, you two are going to get on like a house on fire." and they both laughed. So some of the stories are happy ones, and might just be getting to the good part. Best of luck to them all, that's what I say. Me, I'm just about to start on a new chapter (and I will probably start telling you all about it soon enough) and I'll try hard not to kill anyone off before the end.

And to conclude, though I know he will never read this, I have to say this: mobile guy, whatever it was, I hope you're ok. You'd probably be freaked out to think of some strange guy thinking about you sitting there looking terrified, but I hope whatever it was worked out okay for you.