I have a sinus cold, and like most men, the sneezing, congestion, and sore throat has pinned me somewhere between embryo and day-old puppy on the helplessness continuum. Fortunately, I have electricity and heat (despite the recent ice storm), the company of a snoring dog, and enough Sudafed to air my own episode of Breaking Bad: Manayunk. After a few weeks of neglecting the blog due to school commitments, illness buys couch time, and thus, I have no excuse to miss an opportunity to jot down a few words.
Grad school has revealed that I have difficulty with visual-spatial learning. But despite that short-coming, I am keenly observant. As the blog has grown in both readership and content, I am often asked if the accounts that I author are true. My response is generally, “You can’t make this stuff up.” Quite literally – I can’t make this stuff up, as I am an awful fiction writer. Creative Writing courses sparked as much fear and frustration in my heart as Organic Chemistry. But my strength in writing is certainly a result of my observation skills.
People-watching has become one of my favorite pastimes, and while it is more of a fly-on-the-wall, passive activity, it is never dull. Earlier this week, before I had been weakened by the Plague, I was studying at Starbucks. In strolled a skinny Jewish kid, decked out in a brown Carhartt jacket, Fubu fleece pants, Timerland boots (unlaced, tongue out), and a gold chain around his neck.
To add additional ingredients to this melting pot of identity confusion, dangling from the gold chain was a silver crucifix, thin rimmed Lacoste glasses sat tightly on his nose, and topping off his red carpet ensemble was a Yarmulke. But this was no standard Yarmulke, as it had the Sacramento Kings team logo stitched into the back of it. Just when I thought this scene could not become more bizarre, one of the players from the Philadelphia 76ers came in and towered over this kid in line behind him. Looking down, he locked eyes on the Sacramento Kings Yarmulke, shook his head, and had a quick chuckle to himself.
A few weeks ago, my sister and her boyfriend came to Philadelphia to have dinner in the city. I agreed to drop them off at the restaurant, while I would catch up on some work at a coffee shop. After walking countless blocks in 14-degree weather, the coffee shop was closed. So in an effort to find shelter, I ducked into the first place I saw open – a Ruby Tuesday.
I hate the flair of chain restaurants and it has easily been a decade since I’ve been inside a Ruby Tuesday. But nonetheless, I saddled up at the bar and ordered a drink. I quickly surveyed my surroundings, and realized this was about to be the best decision I had made in a while. To my far right was a young couple having a pre-dinner drink. The guy asked me for a beer suggestion, and then proceeded to order some type of pink drink with a cherry. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt, despite an impending 15-block walk in frigid weather. He then took a phone call, told the caller he was out with his boo, and that he would call him back. After the call ended, he turned to said boo and asked, “By the way, what is your last name?”
As the couple was wrapping up, two guys that worked at a neighboring Sprint store sat down next to me. As they continued to discuss everything from their hatred of their “old ladies” to the best new role-playing video games, they exchanged their DUI stories with the bartender. The gentleman with three DUIs to his name turned to me and made an “Assassin’s Creed” joke that involved a plasma gun and excessive use of the word, “boom,” which I did not get. I just smiled.
A few other characters made up the scene. An older, well-dressed man carrying a bag from Barnes and Noble, who, without having to say a word magically summoned a baked potato and a carafe of Merlot within minutes. The restaurant manager, a skinny guy with thinning hair, torso striped by a Walmart button-down, stopped by a table of attractive, thirty-something women behind me, tried out a joke about onion rings, and quickly struck out. The bartender complained about her three kids to another patron.
The icing on the cake, however, was an elderly (present at the birth of Jesus elderly) African American woman seated immediately to my left. She was wearing a winter jacket, wool hat, gloves, and sunglasses, despite the fact that the sun had set hours earlier. She was drinking double vodkas on the rocks and paying for each round in cash and change. She asked me to watch her drink (empty now for the third time) while she went out for a cigarette. In her absence, the bartender returned, and filled her glass with straight Tanqueray, not vodka as I had assumed. Good golly.
Upon her return, she thanked me for watching her newly refueled rocket and then, in reference to the Sprint guys, she said, “Aren’t you tired of hearing these fat-asses talk about their sad video games? ‘Boom, boom, boom! Shut up, chubby!’” As the conversation continued, we talked about my family and her own, the holidays, and life in general. She became oddly more and more endearing, even after referring to her vanishing roofing contractor as a “dirty little cunt.” “I may look old,” she said, “but I’m gonna find that bastard! And then, well then, it’ll be on.”
Shortly after, my sister and her boyfriend had finished dinner, and sadly(?), it was time to depart Ruby Tuesday. I said my goodbyes to my newly found friend, and headed back out into the cold. Upon asking how my night was at Ruby Tuesday, I merely responded, “interesting.”
One of the primary reasons I find writing enjoyable is the simple fact that life provides all of the material. While I will be the first to admit that I do find myself in a lot of weird situations, some of my most entertaining moments have been through observation of the scene unfolding around me. Sometimes I’m an observer and sometimes I am a participant. Stringing the details together with a few words is the easy part. So keep an open eye and an open ear – it might make for a good story later.