We are stopped waiting for a left hand light. Across the road there are two girls, each with white canes and dark glasses. The girls are holding hands with their free hands, and together they help each other negotiate their way over a parking barrier between a parking lot and the sidewalk.
I am sitting at a fry shop in the old world. The first thing I notice is that there is no technology here. There is a sign above the cash register that says [sic] "We doesn't have the debit, sorry for the inconvenience").
The afternoon waitress just came on shift. I imagine her getting ready a few minutes ago in a small gray room somewhere behind the swinging door between dining room and kitchen, putting on her uniform shirt and tying on her apron. She checks her hair in the small mirror by the door and walks out to greet the kitchen staff. She takes a breath, puts on an artificial smile and comes through the swinging doors.
All the regulars sit at the dining bar, and she greets them by name, asking them about the latest issue of their Daily News: Ronald's Wife wins big at Last Night's Bingo. Donna's Mum Takes a Bad Fall. John's Cat Comes Back From the Vet.
The rest of the customers, she calls Hon and Luv. She comes to my table. 'What can I get for you, Luv?"
I order up a soda, and settle my tab when she appears with my drink. Giving her a hefty tip, feeling like I owe it as the cover charge for an obvious intruder.
There is no automatic timer on the coffee maker, no free wifi and the only pieces of the digital world are the thermostat on the wall and Carl's Casio™ watch, which beeps three o'clock in time with the turning of the hands of the 7-Up™ clock on the wall. Looking around, it seems almost as though the place itself runs on the lives of the customers. A perpetual motion machine of regulars and outsiders.
Each time my phone rings, every eye in the place is watching me. Each time my phone rings, I use my thumb to cover the speaker as much as I can and whisper into the mouthpiece because the earpiece on my cel phone is broken, so have to take my calls on speaker. There are no other cel phones sitting on tables or making unmistakable lines in back pockets. I am quite certain that my MacBook Pro™ is the first laptop this place has ever seen. I feel like a visitor from the future, a visitor with a data pad and a mobile communicator. I feel uncomfortable here. Have I found the convergence of the digital and analog worlds?
We always go for a walk in the first snow of the year. This afternoon it was chilly autumn and tonight it's suddenly cold winter and as we're walking I'm watching my breath curl in icy wispy clouds from my mouth, dissipating into the air. It's too cold to talk so the only sound we're making is the soft sound of two sets of footsteps in the snow. He curls his gloves around my mittens and we swing our hands between us.
