I’m in the cell phone shop and the dude is doing it in style — a heavy-set Hispanic chap of about 30, with a gentle demeanor, describing to me the condition and potential of my phone. It’s a unit that looks like it’s been run over by a semi-truck, roughly. He’s got a shop about the size of a dentist’s office lobby, with about 60 different sku’s of phones and cases on the wall. The only person in there is me. I feel kind of bad for him, suddenly, envisioning his imminent business demise, and think about the possibility of using all this space for a little flat-top lunch eatery. Wouldn’t that be ironic — the Hispanic in a button-down shirt, talking to people with a gentle demeanor and the Gringo cooking nachos and quesadillas?
He does a little research on my phone, goes to his little back laboratory for a little bit, which is just an open area 10 feet behind his desk, and comes back pretty much singing the death knell of my phone. But I can get a new 8 online for $200, he says.
He’s getting my phone ready to give back to me, finalizing the plans, and this heavy black girl comes in, and, while I’m talking to the guy at his desk, and in heavy breathing, starts ranting about her phone, interupting our conversation. She doesn’t really seem angry — more just wielding of this maniacal sort of focus regarding her product within the American economy, ironic, again, given her garb of spandex pants and tight workout shirt that’s way too small for her.
The thought enters my mind to start chewing her out. 10 years ago, I undoubtedly would have done just this, and then it’s another tab to keep open in your mental Chrome browser all the time, it’s another person harvesting homicidal thoughts of you, when they gauge your persona and skills in articulation. I sit back down, nodding at her when she makes idle commentary at me, which if course, is delivered at approximately 100 decibels.
When she leaves, temporarily, after not getting anything done, I voice to the retailer, “I was so close to chewing her out.”
He laughs. And we all feel a little bit better, until she returns again, looking at us with this senile, glazed-over confidence and ascribing the utmost importance to her phone within the eye of the universe.
And I feel like this is only the beginning. I feel like I’m looking not only at the face of the 2020’s, here, but the 2030’s, 20… eh, I’m rambling. Anyway, I’m happy as a little mouse with my little cheese in the corner, and I thank the dude and get out of there. He doesn’t charge me a cent. I know I should have tipped him 10 or 20 but I’m flat broke. Plus, I’m a little addled from that loud girl who’d barged in and interrupted us, who, mind you, was decidedly not my type, her primary shortcoming of course being a little “unstoppable today” for my tastes.