For the past week and a half, I’ve spent my afternoons downing cups of coffee at Starbucks, watching people and attempting to listen to their conversations. Creepy, I know. But very entertaining – although not in the way I expected it to be.
It’s safe to say that Starbucks is a prime studying location for students during the week. I learned the hard way that If you get to Starbucks any later than 3 o’clock, there will be absolutely nowhere for you to sit. I would get there every day around 4, and end up crouching in a corner with a giant cup of coffee, scribbling down peoples conversations in a notebook. Needless to say, I got a lot of strange looks.
At first, I was a little disappointed with what I was hearing. I had gone into this project expecting to leave Starbucks every day with juicy gossip about students and professors. Instead, I would sit and watch people studying away, only stopping to talk to each other about specific homework problems or due dates.
By my third day there I was beginning to lose hope. And then, by some stroke of luck, a man named Tom walked in. I don’t know if that was his actual name, but it was the name he mumbled to himself as he walked back and forth through the coffee shop. He was wearing torn grey sweatpants and a matching sweatshirt. His hair and beard were also grey and muddy. He was, without a doubt, homeless.
Nobody spoke to him, nobody told him to leave. In fact, nobody even looked at him – except me. I watched him walk to the back of the room, grab a wooden chair, and walk out the door with it. Once outside, he faced the chair towards the glass walls of Starbucks, plopped himself down, and watched the people inside. Occasionally he would yell something through the glass, about how everyone should be getting along, or how the world was going to end. And the people inside would smile quietly into their textbooks.
At first I was shocked that nobody else seemed to notice this man. Students kept their faces in their books and baristas kept blending coffee as if everything was normal. I couldn’t understand why I was the one everyone awkwardly stared at, while Tom sat in his chair outside, yelling gibberish at the wall. But as the week went on, Tom would come back every once in awhile and go through his routine. And I found myself growing more and more accepting of him. There was something strangely comforting about his presence. And when he wasn’t there, I wanted him to be.
And that’s when I realized that this crazy, dirty, homeless man was just as much a part of this community as any of us. Nobody told him to be quiet or to go away, because they wanted him there. And when their brains started to get sore from studying and caffeine, he would be outside, encouraging them to keep going, because he was counting on them to save the world.