The Coffee Shop Pickup: Why Stopping to Talk is a Gift

So I got hit on by a man named George one day in January, 2015. He was 85. He had one blinded eye, and one that was being operated on the next week. I watched him amble in to Heine Brothers' Coffee on Chenoweth Lane in St. Matthews in a tricked-out walker. The line started like this: "What's a cute woman like you doing in a coffee shop like this?" And it went downhill from there. Suddenly he was at my table with a warm cinnamon roll and two forks. I motioned "no" with my hands and he insisted with a second fork. I couldn't possibly decline. He offered to buy me another coffee. How can you say no to a man who is sharing his cinnamon roll? He wore a nice Pendleton wool zip-front sweater and excellent leather gloves. I checked his shoes. More nice leather. Okay. Maybe this was all okay. Perhaps it was my fear dancing out in front of me. "Let your guard down," I might have said to myself, quietly. I did. And then the real conversation started.

He told me about his upcoming eye surgery, which had him concerned and scared about whether he'd be able to see two feet in front of him the following week. Real stuff. I told him about my passion to work with "elderly" folks who may want to write their life stories, otherwise known as "memoirs". He suggested I consider the word "old" carefully. Dually noted. We had the best conversation, shared easily there, like old friends, like little cookies between children. That nice. This went on for over an hour. I learned about bits of his life. His lost daughter, his deceased wife. His "war mom" who taught him how to sit up straight and behave. His father, who died while holding him in a car accident. He survived; his father didn't. I couldn't tell if he had sudden tears in his eyes, or it was the drops he used. He handed them to me to read the label closely. I did and then worried silently about who was driving him home. There was no one else there with him. He mentioned that he liked to get lunch at Plehn's, a little deli/bakery. "They have excellent chili," he said. He lived around the corner in a condo and was proud and not proud at times. He'd made some mistakes in life, he said. Of course. We all have. I handed him my card, which he had to take out his lighted magnifying glass to read (this took a while) and then I gave up and wrote my name and phone number in large print on a slip of paper. He spelled out his name and phone number for me. He had a "land line", he said. No cell phone. "I need to get one of those, " he confessed. "Please call," he said. I hated leaving him there, this proud, handsome man in the coffee shop, this newfound friend. Everybody has a story, I'd said to him, most seriously. And I meant it. And they do.

I'll never regret that day I stopped to share time with a stranger, with someone who had lived far more life than I at that point. It has left its imprint on me. It fueled my passion to continue the journey that is Feet to the Fire Writers' Workshops. Stories are precious because people are precious. And who really doesn't have time to listen? That's the gift. And it's free.