Can't Judge a Book...

Yeah, you know the rest of that statement. I've heard it a million times, as we all have, that you can't tell what's on the inside by looking at the outside. Never have I had it so clearly displayed to me as today at Barnes & Noble. While standing in line at the cafe to buy a bottle of IBC root beer, I noticed a really skeevy looking early-twenty-something guy decked out in saggy low rise jeans, boxers puffing out over the waist like a souffle, and a hoodie. Definitely a gangbanger, I thought. As he sat at his small round table, his eyes swept back and forth around the cafe, and, to be honest? Dude was freakin' me out. I started thinking about what I'd do if he pulled out a gun or a knife to rob the place. I was going over the sequence of moves in my head: Drop root beer, scream like girl, dive under nearest table... when the barista called out, "Medium strawberries and cream!" Hoodie McPuffyshorts slowly rose from his table and smiled at the barista, issuing her a polite "thank you" as he retieved his sweet, creamy fruit drink. Then, returning to his table, he proceeded to sip it gingerly, like the "after" version of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, and peruse through a magazine, which I could now only assume was Modern Quilter or Dog Fancy. Even though he sat there quietly and kept to himself, I kept watching, waiting for him to do something more characteristic of the type of person I'd originally taken him for. I imagined him capping the barista because his drink wasn't "strawberry-y" enough, or pouring some of it on the ground in memory of his dead homies. But he didn't. He sat at his table and read his magazine, and I found myself oddly disappointed. And I discovered that I wasn't so much disappointed with his lack of "gangster behavior" as I was disappointed with myself for having assigned him that role based on his appearance. So I sat at my table, drank my root beer, and thought about the lesson I'd learned. After a short time he got up and left, leaving his magazine, crumpled napkins, and empty drink cup on the table. I smiled to myself, feeling fully vindicated. Thug...

~Alan