characters in a coffee shop

Things I have observed at my coffee shop in the last week:

A guy that looks incredibly similar to my friend Jon.  I almost want to wave him to my table, before realizing that the guy has at least 10 years on Jon and looks like he spent some time with Ted Kaczynski and is only retreating from isolation temporarily to have coffee with some of his old army buddies.  And Jon lives in Chicago.  What's really surreal about it is that he keeps looking at me like he knows me too, which made me wonder what kind of character I represented to him.

Then there's the old man with a voice like Tom Waits.  He's saying filthy things to a woman, and even though I can't see her, occasionally I'll hear her voice.  She tells him to be quiet.  To calm down, which is polite considering all the raunchy things he keeps saying he's going to do to her.  Eventually one of the employees comes over to tell him that he is going to have to leave if he can't settle down.  He's quick to apologize and begins to gather up his stuff.  I thought my friend had a better suggestion.  She told me I should go over to him and whisper in his ear that he's a very naughty monkey.  I missed my chance on that one.  But once he left I leaned forward to try to get a look at the woman who was sitting across from him, and there was nobody there.   I stop laughing.

Yesterday I saw a short, pudgy lesbian version of my friend Pat.  She had his clothes on, and wore glasses like his.  Even her hair was similar.  But Pat would never carry around a book titled "I'm A Man."

Then there's today.  I see the dog first, which can't be helped.  You don't normally see dogs in coffee shops, or at least not the one I frequent.  It was a nice looking golden retriever, and when I took a closer look it became pretty obvious that it was a seeing eye dog.  Then I noticed the guy next to the dog, who was wearing sunglasses and in a wheelchair.  I get back to my work and don't pay that much attention to him.  After a while I look up and see the writing intern I recently worked with heading my way, which was right by the door.  I called out to her to say hi and I asked what she was up to.  She was in a big hurry and nudged towards the guy in the wheelchair and told me that she was working as his photography assistant and had to get going.  I took a closer look and verified the sunglasses and the seeing eye dog, but I also noticed a camera around his neck.  So the writer I used to work with is now a photographer's assistant for a blind guy. 

It takes some strong coffee.