Children at the Bar

by Stephen

I figured that since it was the first decent day since sometime in the middle of January, it was suitable that, though it wasn’t quite warm enough to, I’d have my tea and bagel outside this morning. lt was one of those situations where I pushed mind over matter so that I could be enveloped by the sunshine and ignore the fact that it was still the early half of March.

I bundled myself in a bunch of clothes from my kitchen that didn’t belong to me and rode my bike to work to meet the Saturday morning breakfast crowd. I locked my bike to a handicap parking sign (which I still feel a little guilty about, even though it wasn’t in the actual space) and took my post at the counter serving elderly folks decaf and scrambled eggs and the younger crowd an unhealthy amount of our locally roasted strong stuff (which is another thing I feel a little guilty about–though not as guilty as where I park my bike in the mornings). Around 10:30 the crowd thinned out and I was able to roll silverware and let my mind wander over Iceland and diminished scales and how I was going to use the one thousand free miles that I somehow have with US Airways.

Seven minutes after I started the far-too-familiar green linens a young boy and girl walked in by themselves. They were no more than eleven years old; both of them looked a little disheveled and overconfident. They were holding hands and they perched at the end of the bar and ordered hot chocolate and waffles. I kept looking around the Market and outside for some sort of parental unit, but it eventually became evident that these two were very much on their own in downtown. They spoke and carried themselves in the same way that adults do when discussing business deals or about how Dustin from the finance department left his wife to move to Daytona with some young girl he met on the internet, which is all I’ve been overhearing the past couple days. Topically, they talked about things that kids talk about, which I was very happy about: the “what do you want to be?” conversations are infinitely better than the ones you have when you finally become.

After about an hour of talk, swinging feet from the barstools and collecting crumbs on their clothes, their mealtime wrapped up. I set the check in front of them, not really knowing what to expect from a couple preteens having a morning on the town, free of the watchful eye of authority. The boy looked at the ticket and pushed his hand into the right pocket of his jeans and pulled out a severe amount of crumpled money along with some lint and one of those new golden dollars. I’m positive my mouth hung open a little bit as I watched well over two hundred dollars narrowly escape a treacherous fall from his fingers to the floor. He handed me a disheveled fifty and went back to their conversation of whether or not bats were actually blind.

In that moment I was so very thankful to be some minor character in, what I hoped to be, a great epic of vagabonding youngsters. I gave them their change and watched them leave, just as they had come, hand-in-hand.

I pinched myself to insure reality before going back to work.