not necessarily an actual event as much as a description of my state of mind during about a five minute span of time, fictionalized at some points and reorganized chronologically for the sake of narrative composition.
I open my car door and step into the cold winter air.
The bustle of traffic fills my ears as I pull my jacket close to myself, walking briskly across the small parking lot and pulling open the door to my brightly lit destination.
The acrid but comforting smell of cheap coffee embraces me, warming me almost as much as the warmth does itself. I pull up a chair at a table by some large foggy windows, sitting down opposite a familiar face.
“No, press the middle button,” says my friend embarrassingly into his cell-phone. He looks up and waves sheepishly before averting his gaze again, returning all his focus to the conversation at hand.
He is taking a call from his fiancé, meticulously talking her through the nuances of playing a movie on his new Playstation 3. I remove my wool coat and stuff my blue gloves into its pockets. Attempting to settle into my chair, my mind notes that they are made of plastic and an uncomfortable yet seemingly durable metal. As I hang my coat on my stiff seatback, I wonder briefly if the lack of ergonomic design is a matter of cost or merely a strategy to dissuade loitering in this fine fast-food establishment. Trying not to eavesdrop, I take a deep breath of Tim Horton’s air and proceed to survey my surroundings.
In the corner to our left, studying under the familiar fluorescent glow of the donut shop, an Asian couple sits with their noses buried in textbooks. The girl’s bright red pencil case is shaped like a cartoon ladybug, laying sideways on the table and spilling out a collection of multi-coloured highlighters. It has always baffled me how compulsively some girls choose to colour coordinate their notes. I attempt to think of a male who might share this academic trait. I cannot.
To the side of coloured pen girl is a male companion who seems equally engrossed in his own textbook, twirling a pen around his thumb as he stares distantly at the page. His eyebrows are severely furrowed, and it is difficult to tell if he is either completely distracted or completely focused.
Turning to my right side, there is another Asian couple sitting diagonally from each other at a four-seat table. I find this odd. A magazine about computer games sits open on the table in front of the male, completely engaging his attention. Meanwhile, the girl (who is mildly attractive in the protypical suburban Asian female manner -- petite and well dressed, with smooth pale skin and large eyes) types away at the keyboard of a black laptop that completely dwarfs her tiny delicate hands.
I return my gaze to my friend, cracking a wry smile as his Playstation tutorial continues.
“Not that menu, no, go down to video…”
He gives me a look and shrugs, shaking his head as if to say that he had long ago acquiesced in the fact that conversations such as this were to be part and parcel of a stable long-term relationship. It was the compromising price that accompanied being accompanied.
As I sat there listening to a conversation that bore a striking resemblance to one I once had with my mother about how to send an email, I come suddenly to the stark realization of how foreign to me that price actually is.
There in a coffee shop, book-ended by couples and staring straight ahead at another, there comes to me a rush of tacit fear accompanied by possibly the only emotional response that has ever truly concerned me: loneliness.
I wonder why I haven’t met my perfect match; I wonder if there is ever going to be the right girl for my life; I wonder where things went wrong with all the girls that I have cared for in the past. I wonder if I will ever grow up to be an adult along the lines of those peers who increasingly are getting married and proceeding with down payments and mortgages while I scrape up enough cash to buy a soft-taco for my midnight snack.
I wonder these things in the blink of an eye, and snap back to reality as my friend gently closes his cell-phone and returns it to the pocket of his puffy black down jacket.
“Sorry about that, she’s never used the Playstation before.”
“It’s all good,” I reply, laughing while being genuinely impressed by his completely normal domestic conversation, yet at the same time feeling almost unbearably alienated by it.
“It’s part of the territory right?” I ask, and watch him nod his head in agreement.
“Yea, I guess,” he replies.
We laugh, in a moment of awkwardness, and pause to consider my words.
Whatever territory I’m talking about, he is clearly surprised to wake up some days and actually find himself standing there. And it’s a territory I’m not sure I’ll ever even step foot upon myself.
It’s remarkable how completely opposite scenarios can result in the exact same paralysis.
I find this realization strangely comforting, and it assuages my personal panic from code red to mellow yellow. All of this happens in only the smallest fraction of time, and now I am back to the more pressing matter at hand: namely, do I want a large or medium coffee?
