java jive

Starbucks has been my semi-quiet refuge between classes this term. Normally there is a slow stream of customers, usually quiet, well-mannered folk, generally blue and white collars. There is usually a student or two, and on a rare occasion, some idiot talking as loud as possible about a work issue on his or her cell phone, two feet from the table where I happen to be sitting. Day after day it pretty much goes like that. Until today...I was sitting, drinking my grande americano with milk and I noticed an older gentleman, of African heritage, I am assuming, he had a dashiki on and a very colorful hat. Anyway, that's beside the point. He sat outside(it was rather chilly), and coughed a lot, before coming inside. I was sitting by the entrance which on one side has all glass panels. As the guy started to walk in he rapped on the glass by my head a couple times. I looked up, startled, and saw he was pointing at my coffee with a smile and making a grabbing gesture with his hand for the cup. I smiled back and mouthed, no, you can't have this coffee! He came inside and proceeded to stand by where I was sitting, pretending to take my coffee and then slipped a $5 from between his fingers and gestured at me as if to say "I will pay you for it". He was still smiling and joking, and I told him "no, you can't have my coffee. That wouldn't be very nice to take a poor girl's coffee! Give the barista your money and I'm sure she'll make you some coffee!" He smiled and laughed and then moved on to another table. The woman occupying this next table was engrossed in a legal pad and some papers. She was not paying attention to Mr. Man as he motioned at her coffee so her proceeded to pick up her iPhone and started to walk with it to see if she would notice. Remember, his hand was less than 5 inches from her arm but she didn't look up once. So he, laughing, walked back to her, tapped her on the shoulder and motioned at her phone as if to say "hey, dummy, you let me jack your $500 phone!" She took it back with a puzzled look on her face and said, "oh, thank you", as if she had dropped it or something. I don't know. It was all very bizarre. Then he sat down at the table across from me and motioned to the poor unsuspecting barista to come over to the table. She did and and he started speaking in a language none of us knew, gesturing to the coffee at the front of the store. The only word I could pick up was cafe, which in many languages means coffee. So after trying to understand him, the poor girl gets him a vente coffee for free. He isn't satisfied, though. He gestures at the carafes of milk and shoos the girl off to get one for him. She comes back, he motions for her to pour the milk for him, which she does. And then after a few minutes of her checking his face to see if he was satisfied, the barista goes back to her work and he begins to noisily slurp his coffee, all the while throwing out little bits of unknown language and laughing to himself.
I think it's safe to say that there is just something about coffee, people can't resist!