I had to wake up at 6 today, while it was still pitch black outside. Miserable experience. As I was getting ready, though, the thought hit me that I've done much worse: my first semester at VC, I had a math final at 7, and I had woken up at 5 or 5:30. That had actually turned out to be a nice morning... after my final I had to wait for my ride (the other Laura) to finish with her final, so I sat on the lawn and read TS Eliot and drank coffee for an hour or two. Campus can be a surprisingly relaxing place when nobody's around.
It was a rather similar experience today. I honestly don't remember driving to school... but I went to class (I must have, I'm sure), tried my hardest to stay awake for the remaining speakers, and then headed over to Starbucks. Hanna and I were going to meet up for some coffee before I went home and she went to HER final. I got there at about 9 or a little after, and Hanna didn't get there till about 10, so I sat inside and read 1984. There's something about reading in a coffee house that makes you feel sort of classy - intellectual, at least. Though I suppose it depends on what you read. I also took to people watching, which is always entertaining in coffee houses. There are the teens who come to hang out and make a lot of noise (though they never stay long), the working mother who bustles in with her child (who will inevitably break one of the mugs on the shelf, as she did today - the mother will then try to clean it up while the barista hollers that it's really no problem and she shouldn't worry about it. Though I think in that case it's more about the worry of a potential law-suit.), the disheveled-looking old man in a baseball cap, the student who sits with his laptop at the table near the outlets (for some reason it's always a guy. Why is that?), and then the old married couple who sit and watch the birds on the pavement outside the window. Then sometimes you'll see (as I saw today) the semi-attractive man in a white-collared shirt underneath a black sweater, who orders his coffee in a cup and saucer and sits quietly, reading the newspaper. I like this particular sort the best, maybe because most people don't really read the paper anymore. I was also struck by the fact that he wasn't drinking out of a to-go cup like the rest of us.
And then of course, you can't resist wondering if anyone else is putting the inhabitants into stereotypes, and where they've put you. I like to think that I'd be in a category closer to my paper-man than the loud teenagers; especially since I wasn't talking. But you never can tell. Sometimes people are entirely mistaken about others, as I probably was at least once today. I guess there's no way of controlling that, though - if I chose to write a story about the people in Starbucks today, they couldn't do anything about it, just like I couldn't do anything if someone else were to write it. In a way that frustrates me, but in another way, I love its uncertainty. People are different. I suppose that's why, in general, we haven't gotten bored of us yet.
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