I needed to stay home tonight and organize stuff. You know, all that random stuff that piles up at home when you're busy. All those things that can wait until some unspecified time when you have a chance to get to them. Catalogs. Bank statements. Newletters. Court subpeonas. Invitations to tea with the queen. That kind of stuff. Anyway, I
was going to stay home and take care of that stuff and balance my checkbook, and make a shopping list. But then I remembered that I needed to return a few DVD's I rented last weekend. So I took those down to Hollywood video, and decided that I should study for my last final. The act of studying at home is a real challenge for me, so I headed for Bully Blends Tea House. I got my coffee with one cream and one sugar, and my cranberry orange scone and planted myself and my textbook at the little tiny table by the front window. At a table nearby were three people, (a chinese guy, a funny mustache guy, and a girl in a blue shirt) hovering over something that apparently was pretty fascinating.
Now, I must have read
Harriet the Spy one too many times when I was kid, because I'm a compulsive eavesdropper. Lucky for me, we were about the only ones in the place, and the three people were loud talkers. The chinese guy on the right was a coin collector. The other two people clearly didn't know anything about coins, which was just fine with the chinese guy. He was passionate about the subject, and he had an intruiged and captive audience of two. Plus the owner of the shop, and myself, though I tried to look like I was all wrapped up in my chapter on film theory. He talked and talked and I learned all about a coin with a picture of a horse on it, and how there was a production error and a small number of coins ended up with three-legged horses instead of four-legged horses. This lucky guy had a three-legged-horse-coin, which he claimed was worth "a whole lot of money", and he was pretty proud of it.
After a few more show-and-tell coins, the conversation switched gears and they were discussing having children versus not having children, and how old is too old to still not be married, and why the blue-shirt-girl's brother's wife's hairdresser's cousin's poodlegroomer's friend can't have kids because she waited too long, and how the mustache-man's fiance of 4 years just got deployed with the national gaurd. That's about the time I actually started reading my text book. But I was distracted again when the chinese guy reached into his bag and pulled something out.
"Have I ever shown you my sweetheart? She's my one true love. She's not perfect, but I love her, and
I think she's
beautiful."
I quit reading again. I was taken aback. This man was in
love. And not afraid to talk about it. He went on.
"Most coin collectors would say, 'Look at those scratches', but I don't even care. I know, most men treasure women, or their cars...but not me. No, sir.
She's the only one for me."
Wow. Such passion. Very strange and lovely.
