As happens from time to time, I found myself in a coffee shop of a morning recently. My wife had a couple of things she needed to do in the next town up from where we live, as did I, but I got done before she did and, rather than hover over where she was, I took myself off for another cup of coffee and a little pastry. (The coffee was alright, and the pastry was nice enough. It was a good little snack, though I really don’t need more snacks.)

I hadn’t necessarily expected to have the available time, so I didn’t set out with my usual accoutrements for going to a coffee shop. I didn’t have my journal with me to write in, I didn’t have a book with me to read, and I didn’t have any work with me to do. Consequently, I found myself sitting alone at the coffee shop, enjoying a pastry for less long than I should have done and sipping slowly at a cup of coffee, and I had the leisure to simply sit and watch and listen.

It was clear to me as I sat there that the coffee shop has a dedicated population of regular customers. A great many of the people popping in and through while I sat seemed to know each other and to be on good terms. Several stood around, their own cups of coffee in hand, talking together seemingly amiably; I was not trying to listen closely, but tone carries. A few others seemed to be engaged in some meeting–again, I wasn’t trying to listen, but things carry–and they seemed to get on well together. Too, there were a few working on some project or another, laptops open and earbuds in, doing as I have often done.

In all, it was a pleasant experience. I don’t often get to sit and watch; when I go to a coffee shop, I’m usually one of the people working or one of the people in a meeting, and I don’t go out often enough to be a regular anywhere anymore. Aside from <one bookstore [link Books to Share post]>, one or two places in the town where I grew up, and a since-closed tavern in Brooklyn, I haven’t really been a regular anywhere anywhen; I tend to go home and stay there unless there’s some cause to go out, and “because I want to” rarely suffices for that. I wonder if I should let it be so more often.

I did not stay much longer than it took me to sip away my cup of cooling coffee. My wife’s errands came to their end, and there’s only so long I can keep my seat on most coffee shop chairs. But it was nice to get to simply sit and sip, and I should probably try to do it again sometime.

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