FIVE, OBSERVED


The tall, frumpy man in his 50s, in jeans and a navy raincoat, who spent at least four solid minutes staring at a grocery store display of multi-pack Bounty and Viva paper towels. He squeezed each brand, stared some more, then ambled off down another aisle, buying neither.

The stunningly-beautiful raven-haired young woman, with impeccable make-up, jewelry, shoes, and clothes, eating alone in a corner of the fast-food Italian restaurant nearing 2PM. She weighed close to 300 pounds.

The nurse in powder blue scrubs, faded and jaded from fifteen years of service. Her dyed blonde hair was greasy, carelessly pulled back, in need of a touch-up; she wore no make-up. Her demeanor aged her far more than her years. Caring had not ever paid off. She stuffed the bloody paper sheet in a basket.

The wannabe white suburban gangsta, short and thin like a child, poorly put together with odd features and gawky limbs that swung in an uncoordinated manner. He attempted  a swagger outside the grocery store, cheap saggy jeans trending ten years ago hampering his effort. The cigarette he put to his mouth, in staccato bursts, would shorten his life by decades.

The short-haired, very overweight, bespectacled barista at the Starbucks, who took my order for a hot chocolate, calling it out loudly to a co-worker standing two feet away. I cannot definitively commit to knowing the gender of the barista, at all.