From Pissin' Playas to Conscious Crackheads...

People are funny. There were white people on my campus that would sit and have hour-long conversations with street people and empty out their pockets at the end of hearing the tales of woe and destituteness...I don't know, maybe because they felt like they were connecting with the underdogs or something. But on the opposite extreme, I have a friend who runs and screams everytime someone comes up to her for a dollar. Me, I'm somewhere in the middle. I'm not going to be hustled, but I will treat you like the human being that you are.

Recently, in my brief interactions with homelss people, they have uttered some of the most insightful commentary. One guy told my jittery friend that if she was scared of him, then it was because she was scared of what she could become. This other guy told me I looked sad and that I was too pretty to let the ugliness of the world cloud it.But, the best one was this weekend. I was on a date at Sambuca when this guy came up reeking of booze and asking for money. My date barked at him to go on and stop bothering us. The homeless guy told my date that his arrogant attitude was bothering him too. He told my date to treat everyone that he meets as a teacher and a student. You can teach a small baby to walk, talk, eat, but that baby can teach you patience, unconditional love, playfulness...

This stuck with me. Even with the "annoying" people in my life, I try to take a step back and ask what lesson I'm supposed to learn from that person. They must be in my life for a reason, and the quicker I figure out what they represent, the quicker I can move on. So, even from a smelly, drunk homeless guy I can learn life lessons. He was so insightful, wow...Then he asked me if the hair on my vagina was as silky as the hair on my head...Nedless to say the moment was lost, but you get the point ;P

"Wise words do oft out of the mouths of Fools themselves bespeak." William Shakespeare

Piss n' Tell

I alluded to an incident in Starbucks a few weeks ago which I feel that someone other than myself and the Starbucks employees should know...

I was studying at the Highland Village Starbucks across from P.F. Changs on a Friday afternoon. I was deeply engrossed in thoughts of Texas Civil Procedure when I briefly noticed a man come in and sit in a stool adjacent to my chair. Due to the fact that I was intensely focused that day, AND the fact that I am slowly getting over the "coffee bar as a hookup spot" theory, I paid this man absolutely no attention! In hindsight that is probably why he went out of his way to talk to me, we all know that when you ignore someone they want you even more. (If you didn't know that then you just learned a golden piece of information).

After a few more minutes of my purposely not making eye contact, he tapped me on the shoulder & said that I had a piece of string on my back which, lucky for me, he'd removed. Sadly, I didn't immediately realize that this was a cheesy ploy to engage me in conversation, and being the overly fashion conscious person that I am, I honestly thanked him for removing the string. Who wants to go around with a long piece of string on their back?

What followed was a 10-15 minute conversation which I must admit was not half bad. He explained that he was in business as a mortgage broker, and also taught martial arts classes on the side. I'm thinking, gotta love a guy with a side hustle, right? After I explained that I needed to return to studying, we ended our conversation and he went into the restroom. Nothing unusual about going to the restroom right? Just wait.

After coming out of the restroom, he gave me a card with his phone number, and said he would like to get together with me sometime to hang out or have a drink. Not sooner than 10 seconds of him leaving Starbucks did an employee at the register ask me, "Did that guy try and talk to you?" I immediately thought that he was going to tell me that the guy was a "regular" there, and picked up women all the time. That assumption would have been much better that what followed. The employee said in a very serious tone, "Don't talk to him." When I asked what happened, the employee explained that he was cleaning the restroom right before the guy went in, and had to wait outside the restroom when the guy went in because it was one of those one person at a time restrooms. When the employee re-entered the restroom to finish cleaning, he said that the guy not only pissed all over the restroom, but threw a pile of trash on the floor on the opposite wall from which the trash can was located!

Neither one of us could fathom why someone would do that, and in a public restroom to make it worse. I thought, maybe he has an unsteady hand, maybe early symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Nope, can't have Parkinson's and teach martial arts. There was no explanation for such a rude and depraved attack on a public restroom. Then I thought, was there anything in the conversation I had with him that would alert me that he was crazy? Anything abnormal? Usually I make it a point to look out for signs that a man is crazy because women who don't pay attention often wind up on that flyer in the mail that shows what you should look like after 8 years have passed.

I must admit that this guy did spend the majority of the conversation talking about himself, but that's usually an indication of a large ego or a man trying to be impressive, not a lack of public restroom protocol! Hardcore Sex and the City fans out there know the episode that came to my mind, the one when Carrie is dating a politician who asks her to pee on him. Could this guy have a pissing fetish that had reared its ugly head several dates too soon? I wondered, is this the return of the "golden shower," the public version? What if I had actually called that guy? What if I had agreed to go on a date? I have to get that employee at Starbucks a great Christmas present. He may have saved my life, or at the very least my dress.