A plea that will go unheeded

I’m going to ask all of you a favor.  It’s not going to be an easy favor.  In fact, I don’t know if I could accomplish this favor if it was asked of me, but I’m going to ask it of you anyway.

Say, for example, you’re in a Starbucks or a small café and you spy a lone individual – they’re always alone, these people – sitting at a table and pecking away at a lap top.  Characteristically, they will be typing furiously, great spurts of key clicking which will slow and come to a halt, then pick up again, more slowly, before the fingers pick up some more momentum and burst off again.  During longer lulls, this person may stare off into space, out a window, or unseeingly into a crowd of people.

Here’s where the favor comes in.

All of a sudden, that person will suddenly and repeatedly jerk an arm in an extravagant gesture, or make a severe expression over and over again, or even silently mouth words at different cadences but with great feeling.  I understand this is amusing, and you may even question this person’s sanity and ability to function in normal society.  You may snigger to your friend how, “they must be off their meds!” 

Hahahahahahaha.

You wanna know what’s really happening?  I’m willing to bet all the money in your wallet right now that person is a writer, probably a novelist.  They are working on some dialogue and they are acting out the scene, trying to describe how the characters are talking, walking, thinking, feeling, etc. 

I know I’m right.  I rarely get the luxury of writing in coffee houses, but when I do, something will invariably break my concentration and I’ll find someone across the room watching me with great amusement.  I will have just furrowed my eyebrows over and over in different levels of severity to look up and see some very handsome business man watching me from over his newspaper with a very mirthful grin.

Or a retired couple will be sitting several tables away, forks poised on the way to their mouths, staring at me and wondering why I’ve been sweeping my arm over the table over and over and over with great flourish.

Or a teenager will be watching the crazy lady gaze seductively into the winsome face of her imaginary lover, then tilt her head to the side and back ever so slightly, before wetting her lips …

There is no incident too great or too small that doesn’t provide me an excellent opportunity to embarrass myself.  Is it too much to ask not to stare? 

Deep sigh.

That’s what I thought.  Go ahead.  Stare away.  I know I would.