Cafe Randomness

I was asked by my husband to continue blogging. I am not good at this so he has suggested I continue to do this in order to work muscles which, have been resting for a quite a while. Yesterday I began packing part of our apartment for our very exciting move to Oaxaca. We are storing many of our household items. We also spent a good while at my parents petting my dog “Baby,” a puggle (pug/beagle) who has been with my parents and will remain with my parents until we return from our trip.

We were originally heading to Everett to change car insurance companies to lower our payments for the trip. However, our agent had a family emergency, her mother in-law passed away so we could not meet with her. Instead, we stopped at a coffee shop before heading back home. Ken, my father and I decided to sit outside and enjoy the gorgeous weather in Washington. When we were chatting about Oaxaca and having a few good laughs about what our life will be like there, a man who was maybe in his mid forties came straight at us. He asked Ken if he could join us, to the which Ken responded yes. Both my father and I were taken by surprise by the boldness of this individual and Ken really did not know what to do. All we could do was listen and observe him. While the man conversed with ken, I observed the man’s gestures and speech. He often licked his lip and touched his upper legs. I noticed he had many scratches on his arms that had dried up blood. He was wearing a black shirt with white wolverine designs. His crusted bloody lip was still swollen which made my mind wondered. I became distracted by the thought of this man being a person who had gotten in a huge fight. I was in and out of his conversation and heard, “Alaska...Girlfriend...forty dollars...Tulalip...” I can honestly say, I had no idea what he was talking about. I kept on staring at him and creating small stories about where this man had been.

After a while, we told him we were leaving and he got up and said, “thank you for letting me sit with you brothers. I really needed a break.” Then I thought to myself, maybe this guy is really hungry or thirsty and he doesn’t know how to ask for money. So as we got up and we were walking away, I got very close to him and asked him if he was thirsty. He responded with a tender “no.” He said the only thing he wanted was to sit and sober up. He then told me he was heading to the bank. When we said good bye he crossed his arms around his chest, and gave ken and I a “good bye my brothers!” then he looked at my father and said, “thank you, father” then raised his right hand up and then he walked away. My dad, Ken and I looked at each other a bit confused. When we looked back again the black shirt man was gone.

It was very awkward but at the same time I was very impressed that it was not money, food or water that he wanted. All he wanted was to sit for a while, talk and sober up. Go figure.

This made me think that I have met many interesting people in my life. People who I have met for a mere second yet they have influenced my life one way or another. For now, I take this story as something random and surprising.

Speaking of Random- happy birthday Marina.