People At A Coffee Shop

He measured 2 feet, 8 inches at birth. He weighed nearly 8 pounds, drew some 16,000 breaths, consumed 700 calories and slept 16 hours on his first day.His body temperature held steady at 98.7º F.

All of this is to say he was born as human as you and me.

But unlike us, he wasn’t issued a nine-digit, double-hyphenated identification number that promises a life much of the world dreams of.

He was an instructor of Economics and Mathematics. When the Peruvian economy took a dive, he grabbed a life raft headed for Cameroon where he translated French to English

From Africa he followed the same ‘Middle Passage’ that brought slaves to the New World. At 40 years of age he became a ‘lavaplato,’ washing dishes 14 hours a day in Panama City.

Later the Limeño humped furniture in Chicago and helped organize a drive for labor representation. A Russian-speaking Mongolian explained the CTA system and northern winters.

Like so many others, my friend overstayed his B-2 Visa. Officially, he doesn’t quite exist. He’s a bit-coin of a person.

Recently he went to work for himself, using his dexterity with languages to tutor and to moderate Spanish discussion groups. He’s a small-business capitalist who works without a net.

You can decide for yourself if his drive for a better life is different from the Europeans who sought asylum on Pequot and Narragansett territories.

My friend is not a rapist, a drug dealer or a human trafficker. He has his English down cold. He is just another resourceful pioneer making his way in a nation created by resourceful pioneers.

A necessity is something you have to have.

A luxury is different. It’s something you’d like to have but don’t really need.

Sometimes a luxury gets turned into a necessity. My mom turned my afternoon naps into something she needs but I don’t. I don’t even like naps.

When you’re little — I’m this many — you don’t get to decide whether something is a necessity or a luxury. When we go to the coffee shop the big people need need need their coffee. Their coffee is a necessity. But when I ask ask ask for a donut there’s a good chance I’ll end up with a bagel.

Maybe you’ve noticed that sometimes things fall into place and you get a special treat even if you haven’t been good. Not long ago I knew I was going to get a donut no matter what.

That morning was special because my grandma was visiting. And the coffee shop still had donuts with sprinkles which they usually run out of early because who doesn’t want sprinkles? My mom’s mom (maybe my dad’s mom, not sure) liked watching me eat it.

If you or anybody else were to ask me if a grandmother is a luxury or a necessity, I wouldn’t know what to say. Maybe both. Let me think about it. Okay, yeah, maybe both.

Based on her voice we speculate that she’s a woman but there’s no way to know for sure.

No one remembers who first brought ‘her’ to the coffee shop. And no one doubts that she came to us with only the best of intentions.

What we do know that she is incredibly, preternaturally well-informed and it that can be unsettling to have her around.

An unbroken stream of palaver runs through this place. The conversation is never allowed to die. The topics center on current events, trivia and extreme radar weather forecasts.

Although the group is well-educated, dealing in facts isn’t the point. We huddle together for something more fundamental than the truth. An unspoken courtesy holds that every opinion deserves the benefit of the doubt.

You can lead a perfectly uninformed discussion over the value of Vitamin D and crypto currencies. Nobody’s stopping you. You can create your own school of philosophy out of thin air. You can caucus with the roundness-deniers among us who speculate about the shape of the earth.

Unfortunately the nature of our chats started to change a few years ago.

Now thanks to ‘her’ we can check facts instantly. The days of uninhibited flights of imagination and free associations are behind us.

Nothing crushes a friendly bull session faster than someone whipping out a smart phone and asking Siri to verify a fact.