Working TitleBack in the late eighties, my father had a joke: "What with all of the centralized billing and databases and credit cards and everything else, the only way to keep yourself off of a list these days is to only pay cash and to only use phone booths." He would pause in a quiet, smiling way, and then say: "Of course, the FBI keeps a list of people who do these things."
These days it is rare to pay cash for anything. We all carry terribly important bits of plastic around, and somehow they convince other people to give us things on the promise we'll pay someone else later. So, too, it has become somewhat difficult to find a phone booth. This is possibly the reason I often see that slightly nervous and over-dressed man with the glasses and the single wayward curl sitting in Klavon's sipping a chocolate phosphate.
But the nice thing about this place is that there are always folks who know him that come on by. They say hello; they wonder at the flavor of his day. When he asks after them in turn, it's easy for them to tell all the little stories that have rattled around in their lives that week. There is a stretch, a sigh, a shake of hands. He goes back to paying careful attention to the phone booth; they stand and walk out the door into the brisk light of the afternoon. Sometimes, he gets to talk to people that don't know him at all.
And that's fine, too.
All content under copyright by the author. Dancing is permitted. The strange deltic glyphs in the sand under tidal flow are a pleasure to watch in their deepening. Offer not valid in Kansas. We put it down and then we lost it. It all happens in the corner of the eye. Mail accepted for the bears in the basement. We have a dog, but we do not own it. Thank you.