Hey, could you watch my stuff?

I spend a lot of time in Starbucks.  But, I don't spend a lot of money on coffee.  More often than not, I buy a tall black coffee and spend approximately $1.80.  Some days I add half and half, other days I don't.  It's really pretty good rent.  For $1.80 I get an internet connection, air conditioning, 120v power, live entertainment, and don't forget - I also get a cup of half-way decent coffee.

The live entertainment alone is worth the price.  It's amazing what wanders into a Starbucks.  I'm currently writing from the corner of a busy Starbucks and can see a college age girl in cowboy boots- not that cowboy boots are worthy of notice in a small rodeo town like Livermore.  But she's wearing a shortish dress, and a very long sweater.  From the back, she is wearing cowboy boots and a long sweater.

Just behind her is a gentleman with long hair and large gold nose rings.  Behind them is another woman in a long flowing black dress, which - I'm no fashion geek, but - looks like something a Chinese woman might have worn 75 years ago.  Tied to her messenger bag are a pair of black shoes, and peeking out from under the dress are a pair of blue denim colored, corduroy slippers.  She's chatting with the large woman behind her, who must be from Wisconsin, or has grandchildren in Wisconsin, or possibly came across the bright green T-shirt with large white letters at a garage sale and liked the colors.

I'm not judging them.  I actually fit in.

I'm not criticizing; just acknowledging that these folks are evenly dispersed among the men in business suits, mothers guiding baby strollers, and air conditioner technicians also waiting in line.  If catching a decent glimpse of a large cross section of American culture is entertaining to you, then Starbucks is live entertainment.

The show can be distracting, so I often put in headphones and secret myself behind my computer screen to shut out the noise and get some work done.  My work consists of catching up on emails too lengthy to deal with from my phone, writing proposals, and whatever else needs to be done before I'll have a chance to get back to the office.

I can get a lot done at a Starbucks, but I can only sit at the table for so long after finishing 12 ounces of coffee.  And that speaks to another benefit available for only $1.80 - a clean bathroom.  My experience has been that the vast majority of those ordering coffee from Starbucks are honest and kind.   I suspect, however, that once in a while, one of another sort makes his or her way in too.  Thus, it makes me nervous to leave my computer sitting unattended at my table as I step out for a moment.  On the other hand, packing up the computer and charger, clipboard and everything else is a hassle and runs the risk of losing my corner table.

So I will often lean over to the nearest person likely to stick around for the next 3 minutes and say, "Hey, could you watch my stuff?"  They always can.  And it's not unusual for someone to lean over to me and ask the same thing.

 "Excuse me - do you mind keeping an eye on this for me?"

"Sure," I say, and go about my business.  And I do watch their stuff, and I suppose they watch mine.  And it sits there and doesn't do anything worth noting.  I've never seen a computer slam closed and scurry off, or seen anyone make a dive for another's laptop the second the bathroom door clicks shut.  Actually, I've never seen anything remotely resembling a crime ever take place in a Starbucks.

But I got to thinking - what exactly do we hope the person watching our stuff is going to do?

Next time, I might ask.

"Excuse me," a fella might say, "could you watch my stuff?"

"Sure,"  I reply; then, "Oh hey, wait a second - should I come get you if someone grabs your stuff?"

"Uh, well I hadn't thought about that."

"Well," I would say, " I've given it a little thought, and as I figure it, here are your options.  First, I could come knock on the bathroom door and let you know that someone has grabbed your computer.  Then you might either hurry up and finish, so that you can run after them, or we might come to some sort of agreement about what it would be worth to you, for me to run after them.  Should we just discuss that now, or would you rather wait and chat through the closed restroom door?"

By this time he has stopped walking and is probably, slowly, inching back toward his table and laptop computer.

"Or, another option," I would continue, "would be that I just jump up and start yelling at the thief. That might work, and might not, but I would at least be doing something.  You might even hear me in the restroom and know to kind of hurry things up."

My audience by this time would have returned to his seat, but would still be listening.

"I'm not sure what the legality of this next option is," I would continue, "but possibly you would like for me to hit anyone that grabs at your computer.  I'm a little uncomfortable with this idea, but it would be best if we clarify this before you walk away with me in charge of your stuff.  I would hate to disappoint you with my lack of decisive action - supposing that's what you were thinking."
"Were any of these options what you had in mind?  Cause, ya know I could always just watch your stuff."

I doubt I would have to watch his stuff.

Like I said, there are a lot of entertaining people that come and go through a Starbucks.  Wouldn't it be worth the price of admission one day, to see Ms. Wisconsin jump up and run to the bathroom yelling, "That girl in the Chinese dress just grabbed your computer!"  Wisconsin might even bang on the men's restroom door.  I would see the absconded laptop tucked under an arm, shrinking into the distance.  A vault from the curb, an arc of blue corduroy, and a flutter of skirts would land the woman in the pickup truck driven by a college aged girl wearing a dress and cowboy boots.   Flapping in the warm breeze, a few inches at the tail of her long sweater would be trapped in the door.

The storefront glass doors would burst open and out into the courtyard would rush a man with gold nose rings - just in time to see the tail lights of a pickup truck round the corner.

He would finish tucking in his shirt, and I would be glad he didn't ask me to watch his stuff.

The Revolt of a Pen

True, This! —
Beneath the rule of men entirely great
The pen is mightier than the sword. Behold
The arch-enchanters wand! — itself is nothing! —
But taking sorcery from the master-hand
To paralyse the Cæsars, and to strike
The loud earth breathless! — Take away the sword —
States can be saved without it!
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Richelieu; or, The Conspiracy


I am particular about the pens I use.  I purchase black Pilot G2 .07 Rolling Ball pens by the box. These particular pens are the familiar "click top" style with no caps. Mind you, this is not a ball point pen.  The rolling ball pen is far smoother and produces a line richer and darker than possible from any ball point pen.  What I write may be of little importance and of lesser legibility, but the implement with which it is applied to paper is of great import to me.

My wife hates them.  She refuses them, preferring a pricked finger with which to write in blood.  She is left handed, thus her hand drags through the ink as she writes, smearing the calm wet pools of ink at the beginning and end of each letter.  Annoying to her and unsettling to me is this disturbance of the tranquility of drying ink.  The arrangement works out well, therefore, so that we never take each other's pens.

I carry these pens around as a small boy would carry his toy soldier or a mechanic his red, grease-stained rags.  There is always a pen at the ready in my right hip pocket, as if at any moment some profundity may demand its presence.  They also lay about my desktop, and some days I leave the office and realize that one or more has stowed away, and I'm carrying a passel of them about.  The extras will be inevitably abandoned on my bedroom dresser for a time, ordinarily in the company of peers, until my stock at the office runs low; at which time I round them up and they return to my office to again graze among the staplers and paperclips.  Somewhere near the end of that process, I've ordered a new box of pens.

It appears, however, that a revolt is under way, with my pens in the vanguard.  Upon reflection, a revolt may be too strong a term, but that was the first to come to mind, and I shall be inclined to trust my subliminal judgement on this one.  A singular coincidence you may claim after hearing me out, or possibly no more than a chance occurrence with no inherent meaning at all, you may assert; and I will heartily disagree.  I feel that there is a disturbance among the desktop clutter; a harbinger of changing times.

This "shot across the bow," so as to say, came a couple days ago as I finished a purposeful stroll through a small townhouse community.  In my role as General Contractor, I was inspecting the various trellises and arbors scattered along the walkways and gardens.  Using my new IPad, I was documenting each location with pictures and simple notes with regard to any structural or aesthetic defect.  Purple agapanthus, red and yellow roses, yellow lillies, and colorfully blooming trees of a variety I cannot identify, crowded the pictures I was shooting with layers of color in gentle contrast to the white wooden structures.  The air was mild with a gentle breeze.  The chore was not at all unpleasant.

It was with a certain degree of melancholy that I left the final garden and began the walk back to my truck.  The data I had collected would be compiled into a sterile report and would eventually sit before a preoccupied and uninterested community board of directors.  I would perform the rather prosaic task of assigning methods to the needed repairs and values to the methods.  My tool at this early stage in the work was my IPad.

Commencing my stroll an hour earlier, I had made a strategic decision:  as was becoming my habit, I chose to leave my clipboard behind, and carry only the IPad.  Unintentionally, this simple choice had relegated my faithful companion - my pen - to insignificance.

Undoubtedly the darkness of my pocket deepened and the gloom closed thick, as the clicks and thumps of fingers on a glass display resounded through the thin denim shroud.  Each momentary pause, each shift in position could only raise for my pen, the prospect of action and hope of utility.  Each time the shift and jostle of a resuming stride was telegraphed onto the body of my friend, the hope of daylight and use was dashed.  I walked for nearly an hour, and never considered the pen

You can image then my chagrin when upon opening my truck and recovering the aforementioned clipboard, I reached to at last retrieve my fast friend and found its tortured form lifeless and dismembered, tossed about the interior of my pocket.  It was immediately clear that a tragedy had unfolded, hidden and obscured, right under my nose.

Rolled and tossed in the despair of disuse, a friend acclaimed mightier than any sword, had twisted and separated itself from itself, exposing its innermost well of existence to the coarseness of a world in motion.  I reached with tenderness, after ensuring I had suffered no collateral damage, and lifted my wretched friend from the darkness of despair.  In the shade of a large tree, with the morning sun filtering through leaves still tender from recent emergence - themselves a symbol of the cycle of life - I reassembled the remnants of a form no less symbolic.

Restored in substance and in purpose, my pen was recommissioned for service.  I held it familiarly between my fingers and pondered its simple existence.  Sharpened sticks and rocks, lumps of coal, quills and countless ancestral iterations have each in turn composed and revealed the substance of ideas and imaginations; then each in turn confronted obsolescence.  The progression of technology has enlightened and inspired mankind into more and more advanced forms of this, the conqueror of the sword.  Then with subtlety, computers rose in competition and the computer printer threatened more.  Yet, even in the face of these raging giants, the humble pen and paper had held steady in one seemingly unconquerable feature - portability.  And then, even that advantage was challenged.

The tablet - not of biblical stone, requiring the finger of God; nor papyrus scroll, etched with the hieroglyphs of ancient scribes.
The tablet - not assembled leaves of rectangular paper, bound and lined for a singular purpose; the application of ink through the nib of a pen.

Having taken a form unshackled from the constraints and burden of any writing instrument, a bold, aristocratic tablet had thrown down the gauntlet at the feet of the mighty pen.

Understanding slowly dawned upon me.  The light of this new dawn made clear to me that the self destruction of my friend within my pocket on a charming spring morning was more than despair - it was revolution - an act of revolt against a threat to its very existence.  This act of self flagellation, the timeless and universal act of final rebellious recourse; a sort of extreme civil disobedience on the part of my pen, was only the beginning.  As if in conspiratorial concert, since that day, my stapler has mysteriously run out of staples.  What's more, I discovered my pad of graph paper reduced to its last sheets.

I find this sudden disturbance of my desktop assemblage to be unsettling at best.  What more lies ahead I cringe to imagine:  Printer paper jamming at the far recesses of a device, scissors dulled and dangerous, letter openers missing altogether, lurking in dark corners?  Think about your own office - have you not noticed?

I have no resolution to this dilemma, no call to arms;  my observations may be irrelevent.  But I fear to ignore, lest at our collective peril, my observations be a glimpse of a prefatory skirmish, or outlier of a greater battle.  I do not know; I can only report my case.   But be sure - I'll be keeping my IPad safely away from my desk.  Let history bear record, the treacherous pen will not countenance defeat.