welcome to the story.

If you keep your eyes opened during the day you are bound to see something that is either intriguing or weird. Usually for me, what I see lies in between the two. Two experiences today with two different faces but with one thought in my mind during both of them that rest in between the two, the intriguing and weird. Beginning with the blonde hair kid with the sheepish grin on his face. Kind of the bewildering smile that you might find on the face of Rick Moranis. Part devilish, part na�ve, part stupid. He could even have some mental deficiencies but that doesn�t seem to be the case at this point. If he would just look at me in the eyes and stop scooting back and forth across the restaurant floor, I might be able to get a good handle on his mental capabilities. But there were drinks to be filled and that task did not require a passing grade from me and my eye exam to be completed successfully. What began as a simple ketchup filling task turned into a rather perplexing event that is still playing with my mind, tickling me with �why�. When you wake up in the morning and slide some spanking new blue jean shorts on, then socks (which I still can�t decide if they were crew or tube) that pressed flushly against his legs that may or may not have seen their first hairs of adolescence - you know it would have to be a good day. To top it off, or to bottom it off as it would be, were a pair of white tennis shoes that looked as if they had just left the hands of a young senorita at the sweat shop disguised as a factory, as she tucked them neatly into their box to await shipment, a sale, and finally this moment in front of the ketchup dispenser. I doubt that these sparkling white shoes were recent purchases though. For I have my suspicions that they were in fact a couple of years old but had remained in pristine condition for a variety of reasons. One being that that I�m sure they had never seen the grass stains of a neighborhood football scrimmage or the scuff marks from the blacktop in a 3rd period P.E. basketball game. Secondly, whether true or not, the image of him locked in his bathroom hunched over the sink scrubbing away at his shoes meticulously with a wet rag and a bottle of white shoe polish kept coming to my mind. Either way, he had to know as he stood in front of the mirror this morning, examining his outfit before his day�s journey began, that his clothing selection would lead him down this path of wide open possibilities. Before I share the uniqueness of the situation though, perhaps it would be helpful to share another side note. While waiting for his and his family�s order to be called, and in the midst of filling paper ketchup cups and refilling his brother�s Cherry Dr. Pepper as it were, he would grab a stack of napkins the size of a small country. This happened three times in a matter of five minutes and in the middle of all the scooting and filling and refilling, a small forest equivalent to the small country of napkins died and went to a better place. In the one hand he of course carried ketchup or a drink, depending on the trip. In the other hand he carried a book. Leaving the only viable place to put his small country of brown folded paper, in his blue jean shorts front right pocket. Obviously this was the ideal spot for his ever growing napkin collection to be stored on his and its journey across the room. The book, a wonderful read I�m sure, carried with it a story of its own that I was hoping to discern as I sipped on my drink and took small bites out of my Otis Spunkmeyer cookie, hoping to conserve it for the duration of my quest. The book, although I couldn�t see the cover, was a science fiction novel from the bookstore I�m sure. Or maybe he bought it on the internet. He looks computer savvy enough. But the size of the book, at least a thousand pages, and the shape and it being paperback led me to this conclusion. That and the fact that the kid looked like the science fiction type with his predominantly white shoes. So I�m sure it was a book full of stars and planets and talking monkeys with guns or better yet . . . light sabers. This genre of literature has never been my cup of tea. I�ve always preferred Hemingway over talking monkeys. Which might be why I�m sitting here doing nothing with my life but writing about a complete stranger while he does something with his life, that being the owner of the largest napkin collection in the southeast. For what purpose he brought the book to the restaurant, I�m still yet unsure of. It certainly was not to read. He was to busy doing things that people with white shoes do. Perhaps it was his badge of honor. Maybe in some eerie way he wanted the pain of listening to his peers point out why he was different, a bookworm at best and a freak at the worst. By feeling the pain, he could wear that on his sleeve as a mark of his suffering. Because everyone desires to identify with the righteous. He was on his own spiritual pilgrimage, one that was both holy and profane, and for him that meant bringing his book into the restaraunt hoping to die a martyr's death. A valiant saint he could have been in another life, equipped with both sword and sensibility. But to give the situation a fair hearing though, he probably just thought he�d get a chance to knock a few pages back. (the end for now. i'll finish the story later. i'm to tired to keep writing and to tired to transfer it to the computer.)