Huh, Small World

Trigger warning: I swear at least once.

It is 8 am in Seattle, I am at a random little downtown coffee shop in the Belltown area that I’m fond of. I am looking at my bagel and lox, and I am emotionally distraught on the inside – the guy is clearly new – this is a disaster. I was raised to be grateful and clean my plate, and not complain about it, but; but! There are limits to propriety and having good manners. This new guy’s bagel is pulling a Chris Columbus; exploring new worlds it has no business being in. The bagel’s crimes are as stated below.

The cream cheese – my dear friend, if you are using a 1:1 bagel to cream cheese ratio? That is too much. It’s supposed to be a schmear of cream cheese, not a smear campaign against cream cheese.

The capers – I think the nice man used seven – seven capers total for the whole bagel and lox.

The onion, diced not sliced… Ok, that’s a shop choice, not the nice barista choice. But! He put as much diced onion on there as he did capers.

The lox, the crowning jewel of the bagel and lox… see capers above.

Tomato (once again, a shop choice) there is no tomato.

There you go, now you understand. And, before you start calling me ungrateful or telling me about the economy and scarcity of ingredients I must remind you of something. When you pay sixteen bucks for a bagel and lox, (Seattle price, depressingly normal), you expect your money’s worth. Not an everything bagel with cream cheese that’s been accentuated with hints of the idea of being my favorite cultural comfort food. But it’s fine, the guy is new, this is Seattle, I’m sure he’s trying really hard to make what he would want to eat if he ordered; it’s fine – if I get upset or annoyed I am the problematic individual. So I eat my bagel and cream cheese and take the first sip of my coffee.

Damn, words spring unbidden to my mind, this guy sure can make a proper cortado. It’s eight in the morning, it’s a Monday. Sure, he only messed up the bagel because he’s tired – clearly he’s an amazing barista! The consistency of the milk, the balance of the espresso, I watched him grind and tap the shot by hand – this man is an expert! I reach a decision, if I see him working I’ll skip the bagel and just get the coffee. A proper cortado is such an annoying thing to find in this city; the city where they expect their coffee sweet thanks to the Giant Green Mermaid in the Sky. This cortado has made my day. I forgive you, New Barista Bro!

Bong!

Bong!

Bong!

Someone is tapping on the glass outside and waving excitedly at me – apparently I know them? Smiling face, poofy hair, they’re coming inside… Time to start racking my memory – clearly they know me well enough to go out of their way to say hi. Clearly I’m an asshole. I have no clue who is coming in to say hi.

“Dude! Eric, bro! How’s it been!” He’s smiling at me, really, a super friendly beaming smile. This man is happy to see me –

“Uhhhhhhh…” I begin with, while trying to show that I am desperately attempting to remember a name before I offend them.

Fortunately my old friend, whom I can’t seem to remember, realizes that it is ridiculously early in the morning and I need some context clues. “Bro, it’s me!” Another big smile – wow, I’m really bad at this.

Welp, time to drop the statement of forgetfulness, hopefully I don’t offend them. “Have we met before?” Blunt, yes. But better to be blunt than to be weirdly passive aggressive; I don’t know how to do passive aggressive.

His smile falters for a millisecond, barely an imperceptible twitch of the lips, and then it’s back, “Dude, it’s me, John!”

John! I’m out of my chair; I’m giving him a crushing hug. It’s John! I haven’t seen him since high school, he’s someone I wasn’t even close to in high school; yet long years and nostalgia still caused me to feel a sense of kinship with him that usually is only reserved for family. We had a graduating class of fifteen people; half had known each other in some capacity since kindergarten. So yeah, small class, long ties – and the passing of years makes even the classmates you hate feel like cousins (albeit cousins we don’t talk about.)

And John? John was not in that category of hated classmates; he fell more into the I-do-not-know-you-that-well-beyond-a-superficial-classroom-relationship-but-you-chill category of former classmate. Getting up out of my chair to hug him was an appropriate response. He sat down briefly and we shot the shit for a second, the conversation went something like this –

“How’ve you been?”

“Been good, been good; you?”

“Same, same, not much different.”

“Remember Fred? He lives around here, on my way to see him now actually.”

“Cool, cool – I’m on my way to work”

“Oh nice! Where at?”

“Oh, just a temp job in the area.”

“Sweet! Yo man, I gotta bounce, nice seeing you though!”

“Yeah man, same, wanna get a photo real quick?”

“Sure!”

We pose together, we take a quick selfie, and with assurances of “I’ll see you around.” John is back out the door as quickly as he came in. From the window I watch him go down the sidewalk, and I turn once again towards my cortado. Still delicious. I look over at the barista; he’s hiding a half smile.

I shrug my shoulders and give him an awkward smile, “Life is always full of surprises.”

The barista chuckles, “Well, whoever that was, he did a full 180 on the sidewalk when he saw you in here.”

I nod my head, “Yeah, we went to school together.”

“Huh, small world.” Is the sage response I get from the man behind the counter.

He’s right though; it is a small world; a small world where people run into each other in the most unlikely of passing situations. A small world where even the polite farewell of I’ll see you around is genuine; life will cause our paths to cross again, even though we won’t plan for it.