Overheard at Booth 2: Christmas

there was so much there and it was so much stuff it kept falling off the shelves and i was running through the aisles and i had a basket but the wheels kept getting stuck and so it kept veering off to the left and bashing into the shelves and the stuff it just kept falling and some of the stuff was falling into the basket and some was just falling out over the sides and onto the floor and it was the best dream about Christmas shopping that i ever had in my life!

At the Counter

John Steppenwolf says, "I don't really think the Internet killed civility. I think it just opened the floodgates for people to hide behind their own nasty tongues."

Verble says, "There once was a place for polite disagreement, sure, and passionate debate. I miss that part about us, you know, as a people. Nowadays, all we get are these Facebook flare-ups and petty disputes . . . "

"FOR FRIKKIN'REAL?!" shouts the Barista, coming out of the back, and thumbing her phone in a rage, madly. "Block ME from your Facebook just because I'm friends with Maggie - well, we'll see about that, little miss puckerhead!"

Verble turns back to Steppenwolf, and says, "I rest my case."

Overheard at Booth 5: Not at all like Christmas

My daughter took down her tree last night.

The small one she had in her room?

Yeah, the one Trav got for her. She packed it all up, nice and neat, and took all the stuffed Santas and reindeer she had all around her room, packed them up in a little box, put them out in a supply closet.

What's that all about?

Trav was all mad at her for breaking her grounding, going out with her friends to the mall. I mean, she called me at work to see if she could, and I didn't know Trav had already had a talk with her about it last night, making sure she knew that she was still grounded from cheating on her algebra test at the beginning of the month.

I see. Playing the old mom-against-the-dad routine.

That's my daughter. Very resourceful.

So why'd she pack up all her Christmas stuff?

She said this year isn't at all like Christmas. She said there's no Christmas Spirit when all she wants is her freedom.

Well, that's an eighth-grader for you!

Overheard at Table Two

Ava Guday: You know, Spanish is a stangely musical language.

Ana Phalaxis: A strangely musical language, you say?

Connie Undrum: Yeah, every time a doorbell chimes, somebody says "Key in S" !

Overheard at Table 3

Charlie: I heard on NBC that there was a bomb that was discarded in an airport in Namibia, a bomb that was made by an 80 year old granny from California, and she said it wouldn’t work because of a ‘boo-boo’ - a 'boo-boo'? Seriously? I mean, you just can’t make this stuff up!

Niall: Better than any fiction writer, lemme tellya, but get this, I heard about and 83 year old serial killer in Austria who got out early because of bad health so she could go on a trip to the Vatican, and then she just disappeared! Vanished, poof!

John: And we think that the kids are running crazy - this is the year of the wild octogenarians.

Niall: Yeah, one’s a terrorist and the other is Hannibal Lector. It’s a sad sad world when you can’t even trust Grandma anymore!

Overheard at Booth 4: Storm from the East by Milton Viorst

1: . . . and this has been the best book I've read this year about the wars in the Middle East - it didn't sink to any level of rhetoric, it was simply an honest attempt to look at the history of the region to explain why certain current events have unfolded the way they have. It goes back all the way to the 6th Century, even, and it really really made me think about why these people are actually so completely utterly locked in the P'O'd mode all the time.

2: I thought it was just because they were evil.

1: That's the answer that people want to you to think when they don't want you to think. Seriously, every American should be made to read this book . . . AFTER they are forced to read Why We Fight. Then they can see the COMPLETE difference between sheer paranoic chest-thumping rhetoric and thoughtful crafted historical commentary.

3: Yeah, but I think you’re forgetting something. We LIKE the rhetoric. We don’t want to have to think.

2: Right, come on, dude, that’s why we have Fox News!

3: . . . and I like a bit of chest-thumping every now and then.

1: Good lord.

At the counter: Advent Countdown

Lucky Moran says, "I love this time of year, when there's a nip in the air, everybody's all hunkered down in their coats . . ."

"Blizzards swamping New England."

"Well, I feel sorry for those guys, but"

"All the way from Nashville to Chicago,"

"OK, OK! Some people have to get themselves into the Christmas spirit and some have the spirit dumped on them in four feet of snow - I - GET - IT!"

Otis smiles. Sips more of his mocha latte.

Niall Carter says, "I'm with you, man, I love advent. I wish they would make a road movie out of the advent story."

"A road movie?" Lucky asks.

"Yeah," Niall says, "it's got everything: mystery, romance, danger - roadside bandits - and high tension - this woman's almost full term, man, and she's riding on the back of the donkey, I mean, you KNOW they had to be worried that her water'd break and she'd go into labor right there on the road!"

"Hold on there!" Otis jokes, "This is a family establishment!"

"Cut it out, Otis," says Lucky. "Niall, that's why they had something called 'Faith' - they'd been told by Gabriel what was going to happen, they shouldn't have had anything to be concerned about."

"Listen, I KNOW they had faith, but they were also two human beings, a middle aged guy -

"Late twenties, early thirties" Otis interjects.

"That's middle age for then," says Niall. "And a fifteen year old girl - riding through the desert, which is dangerous in the best of times, man, don't tell ME they weren't the least bit nervous!"

Lucky muses, "I see your point. Road movie. Are you thinking more along the lines of Mad Max road movie or Little Miss Sunshine road movie?"

Niall says, "I'm thinking something more like Fandango."

Otis says, "I like your Mad Max idea. Joseph whipping some Philistines with his staff like some sort of Talmudic Jet Li - that'd be cool."

"See?!" says Niall with a smile. "NOW you're getting into the spirit of Advent!"