Pieces of Humanity

As the coffee at the VW service counter wasn't sufficient, I found myself walking to Starbucks to enjoy my usual triple cappuccino. It was a very zen moment for me, just sort of sitting there doing nothing in particular, just enjoying my beverage and watching people walk in and out. It was then that I had noticed a woman with her coffee and New York Times in tote, who began to walk toward a table to sit down and enjoy her beverage and her paper. However, fate somehow intervened.

Apparently her barista didn't care to snap the lid shut sufficiently, and she thus couldn't avoid spilling a quarter of her coffee all over her wonderfully planned-out work outfit. And for a moment, I just watched her there, standing in silence. She just didn't know how to react--she didn't curse or so much as wiggle a finger. I felt guilty just watching this misfortune transpire, and eager to avoid being some kind of schadenfreude, I handed her the napkin on my table. That gesture was apparently enough to snap her out of her reverie, at which point, she unintentionally muttered something quite philosophical: "Could you imagine such a thing?"

And as inane and absurd this might sound, it fired up the synapses quicker than the cappuccino could. This woman somehow thought she was exempt from any kind of ill-fated morning misfortune, even though a coffee spill is pretty low on the hierarchy of ill-fated occurrences. And I think she's not alone in this train of thought. I have this idea going now that most people just couldn't stand to take a fall and endure so much as a scratch. Or worse, someone could think that they're somehow above everyone else, and thus are not subject to stupid choices and mistakes and folly. Infinitely worse is when they expect another to take the fall for them.

So could I "imagine such a thing"? Why yes, I could. I could imagine something like that occurring just about once, if not multiple times in a day to me. People are so incredibly imperfect, and for some reason that seems so painful for people to take. So you spilled your coffee. Go get someone to mop it off the floor, finish drying off yourself, and enjoy the rest of your coffee and your paper already. Can't you see you've got a life to live? Or better yet, "Can you imagine that your day has a greater meaning?" I mean it's people like these who account for the booming antiperspirant market...