When Coffee is More Than Coffee

For those who know me it comes as no surprise that I am a frequent visitor of coffee shops. I love coffee, the smell of it, the taste, the moments of clarity and focus that comes along with it. In my mind it's nearly perfect. Although I love coffee I have to admit that I often go to coffee shops that serve sub-par coffee even though I am capable of making an often tastier cup at home. The reason being that I often go to coffee shops for other, more entertaining reasons. I love to people watch. Every time the door open my head swings in that direction to glance at who's walking in. "Oh look, another character has entered this enormous skit I call my life." I admit it, I eaves drop on conversations and have even caught myself getting involved and putting my two cents in. This story isn't my own but belongs to one of these characters who continues to pop up at these open casting calls.

The stage has been set, I'm at the Starbucks in East Grand Rapids. The setting is a weeknight evening a couple of months ago. This particular Starbucks is located in an area called Gas Light Village where gas street lights continue to glow through the night harking back to an older era but built in the middle of a predominantly white upper middle class residential neighborhood. I'm sitting at a small table built for maybe two and there isn't an empty chair in the building. Sunken low in a leather chair along the wall in front of me is the star of tonights performance. He's a balding, disheveled, old Japanese man who's perfectly content staring at the opposite wall with his hands crossed. For the ease of this writing his character's name is Mr. Miyagi.

Everyone is busy buried in their laptops when Mr. Miyagi springs from his position and walks over to a young woman sitting at another small table and in a loud broken English voice half asks to see her computer while already reaching out for it. Taken by surprise the young woman appeases the man and he soon resumes his position as if nothing had happened. I knew exactly how she felt for he had done the same thing to me a couple of weeks previously. It was because of my previous experiences that I had a hunch as to what was going to happen next. I glanced around and saw a couple other patrons shoot each other questioning glances. Five to ten minutes pass and again Mr. Miyagi walk over to the young woman and begins to use her computer. This time it's evident that the young woman is a little peeved by his continual disturbance. A few members of the audience now start snickering. This happens yet a third time but this time the young woman, keeping her cool, turns Mr. Miyagi down by using some fake excuse that I couldn't make out. It doesn't faze him and the denial just rolls off of him.

This time as Mr. Miyagi sat down he stayed leaning forward in his chair. He reached into his coat pockets and pulled out a few things. Everyone payed no attention to him because they thought the show was all over and they all returned to their own self interests and buried themselves in their work once again. A couple minutes later Mr. Miyagi got up once again. Immediately all eyes were on him. He walked towards the door but rather than going through it he stopped two feet from it and stared out. He brought the contents from his pocket to his mouth and lit it. I few puffs of thick smoke later he reached for the door, opened it and strolled out.

Everyone in Starbucks sat there with their jaws preyed open shocked as they realized that he had just lit up a joint right in front of them, in the middle of Starbucks, in Gaslight Village of all places. I have heard stories of Mr. Miyagi before and his questionable "occupation" or perhaps hobby so I wasn't too surprised when I saw this happen. What shocked me was what came next. Immediately everyone in Starbucks were best friends talking to strangers about what they had just saw. Laughing at the absurdity of it, questioning each other as to what they should do next. Should they call the cops? Follow him to make sure he's okay? Evangelize to him? They started joking about it, "I didn't see that on the menu!" "So this is what it's like to visit Amsterdam." For me it was fantastic, people who would have been perfectly happy with keeping to themselves were now have a blast conversing and laughing with perfect strangers. This beautiful moment would have been missed if it hadn't been for Mr. Miyagi leaving on a "high" note.