conversations with strangers #57

i sometimes talk to strangers. here’s why.

i was scurrying to work on a blustery morning. i was on the later side of things and was already pondering my to do list for the day. meetings and projects and decisions and more meetings mounted in my head and i stopped paying attention to what my feet and hands were doing. as such, my thermos o’ decaf coffee hit my thigh and in direct opposition to my own clumsiness stuck its landing gracefully and upside down.

“huh,” i thought, pausing, studying, and laughing before leaning down to pick it up.

“that doesn’t happen twice,” a guy said.

i looked up at where i was; at the junction of where an apartment complex’s entrance hits the main sidewalk. of course this would happen in front of an audience. “no, it does not,” i said, smiled, and hoped the rest of my day would follow the trajectory of my thermos — graceful, albeit upside down.

it’d be better than me stumbling upright through the remaining hours.