Mental Magnet?

“Enjoying your Saturday?” the Peet’s cashier says, thinking she’ll get a superficial answer.

“I’ve never seen so many weird people in one morning,” Charlie says.  “In my job, I see weird people every day.  Not like this, though.” 

I know,” she says.  “They’re all out this morning, all in my store.”

It started with the bakery.  We walk in and, unlike any other visit, the place is vacant and dead and smelling quite unlike a bakery.  No one rushes around putting dough in big ovens and no bakers rush around with big spatulas taking bread out of ovens.   It’s cold and dark , like we’re in the old Soviet Union.

Then either a 12 year-old boy or 14 year-old girl, we couldn’t figure out which, came around from the back somewhere.

“Hi,” he or she said in a little too excited High School drama-type voice.   “How can I help you this morning?”

Tell me if you’re a boy or a girl, I thought.  I can’t eat until I find out.  It’s killing me.

“Pumpkin muffins,” Charlie said.  “I love your pumpkin muffins.”

“Looks like there are two muffins left in there,” he/she said, looking around the bare shelves as if there might be more hiding somewhere.  “They don’t look like pumpkin, do they?” 

The more I watched this kid, the more I suspected he/she found the door unlocked and decided impulsively to play baker.  There’s nothing to prove this is a bakery except for these two muffins and a few loaves of Challah bread. 

Usually there are too many choices.  This time I had no choices.  “Pass,” I said.  “I’ll wait.” 

I think, ‘I’ll wait until I know if you’re a male or female and why you aren’t home watching cartoons at your age.’  I’ve lived in San Francisco.  I’ve worked in design.  I know people who clearly aren’t one sex or the other.  I once had friends who were clearly one sex but clearly dressed as the other.  Why am I being so inquisitive?  When did I turn into my parents?

The bakery phone rang.  The boy/girl answered it like he/she was in a play, pretending to be a business person.  “Can you hold a moment, sir?  I have a customer.”

The kid’s phone dialog even sounded like a high school play.

While the bakery gal/guy was distracted, I threw money on the counter and we ran out of there as fast as we could.

We head straight for the caffeine.  Peet’s is crowded but Charlie found an outside table, right in prime promenade territory between expensive boutiques and the upscale Farmer’s market.  I stand in line for twenty-ounce hot drinks from heaven.  Starbucks is simply coffee compared to Peet’s.

A very skinny, very tall man walks by me wearing a boy scout uniform.  He’s probably forty, but as stick-skinny as a grade school kid.  He walks like a grade school kid, too, his head held up with smirky grin on his face, hopping lightly.  He crosses by me three times before I get to the front of the line.

While I’m making sure I get my money’s worth of half and half, another odd-looking guy bobs by.  He’s wearing what looks to be a girl’s gymnastic leotard, shiny blue.  It’s tucked into tight jeans which he wears very high on his waist.  His waist is sucked in, giving him an even more girlish look.  He seems pretty proud of himself.  Some people like to advertise the fact that they have a gym membership. 

Charlie and I can’t read the newspaper without pointing out weird people to each other.  Charlie points out a guy, even skinnier than the adult boy scout, wearing what looks like bird-watching clothing and equipment, looking under cars and around corners with urgency.  He rushes to a spot, poses and stares for a moment, then rushes to another place. 

“Okay,” Charlie says.  “Where’s the camera?  This must be a set-up.  There can’t be this many weird people by accident.”

The leotard guy walks by again, flexing his arms close to his body to make them look bigger.  He holds a hot cup of something with a spoon sticking out of the little cup.  He lifts his beverage to his face, all while keeping his arm flexed and close to his body.  He doesn’t see nor move the spoon.  It goes right up his nose. 

After the initial shock, he regains his composure and continues across the street confidently.

Walking diagonally toward us, blocking as much traffic as possible on the street, is a woman dressed like a flight attendant.  She’s got the cap, the prim suit and white shirt.  She drags behind her one of those flight attendant suitcases on wheels.  She walks like a flight attendant, too, as if she knows she holds the power to keep you from a little bag of twenty peanuts.  We’re twenty miles from the nearest airport.

I turn around and notice a very short weird-looking guy with a red beard.  He must have been staring at me for a while.  I’ve been staring at everybody else so I didn’t notice.

“Is there a wireless connection right there?” he asks.  He’s holding a bag of vegetables, not a laptop.  “Are you just writing or what?”

“Just writing,” I say.  About you, I want to say.

He smiles and stares like he’s waiting for me to answer even though I already did.  He doesn’t move.  I start counting 1 . . . 2 . . . 3.  I wonder how high I can count before he leaves. 

“Look,” Charlie says.  “My nail hole’s getting better.”  He holds out his index finger way up high.  “This finger gets all the abuse.  It’s the one that holds everything.”

This must have sounded weird to the short weird guy.  He wasn’t there when I looked again. 

Two guys, both wearing white, tight t-shirts tucked into jeans, walk one behind the other, their heads held high and confident.  Without saying anything, they both take the sunglasses off their heads and put them on in the same way at the same time.  It looks choreographed.

Charlie leaves me on the promenade to stare for myself while he gets more coffee.

“Is this refill number three or four?” the cashier asks.

“Four.”

“I’m impressed,” he says.  “I haven’t seen you going to the restroom yet.”

Charlie enjoys a good conversation about his restroom habits.  “Nope,” he says.  “Years of training and discipline.  I have guts of steel.”

Charlie sits back down just in time to see a mental woman walk right up to a couple of thirty-ish normal-looking women.  They were sitting on a bench, smiling and enjoying their coffee.  I noticed them before as I wanted to make sure we weren’t the only normal people out.

The mental woman leans in and starts yelling at the normal women.  They leaned back, their eyes wide and staring.  When she was done yelling, she continued walking along the promenade like this was nothing out of the ordinary.

<>The women were silent for a few moments.  Then they looked at each other and started laughing.   One of them says, “Thanks, lady.”

“I take it she wasn’t related to you?” Charlie asked.

“No!” she says.

“That could be me in thirty years,” the other one says.

“I thought I was the only mental magnet in this town.  Anyone needing meds and a bed seems to seek me out,” Charlie said.  “Thanks for making me feel better.”   

The normal women leave.

“Let’s go,” I say.  “This is the first time we’ve been here and not seen a single person we know.  Let’s leave before someone we know sees us and thinks we belong here.”

While I pack up my laptop, I notice the couple at the next table.  Or rather, I notice the dog at the next table.  A big brown dog sits patiently upright on a wooden chair between a man and a woman, exactly as if the dog was a toddler.  The three of them look like a scene from a children’s storybook.

“Good place to have a family meeting,” Charlie says as we walk by.

For once, I’m grateful Saturdays only occur once a week.

A little help? [] 6:26:12 PM