Closed shops and talkative teenagers.

Today I walked 23 blocks to the comic shop only to find that it's closed down. :( On the plus side, I had an interesting encounter in the bookstore, where I went in an attempt to salvage my day after my comic shop disappointment.

I sat down in a chair to rest, and sitting across from me was a teenager. He had a half empty 2-litre bottle of some off brand Mountain Dew, and he had 14 books next to him. Mostly manga and a Halo novel. I was flipping through a book and he told me the creepy lady was gone. I said, "What lady?" He told me about an old lady who was sitting in the chair behind him, and he asked me if I thought she was creepy. I said, "I didn't see her." He said she was just sleeping in the chair, and that he wanted to tip her over. He said he calls it 'old tipping'. It's like cow tipping, but you tip over the elderly.

He kept asking me questions, like if I play Dragon Age, and telling me about random things. He kept saying, "Don't mind me," as if it was his catch phrase. At one point he asked if he was annoying me, so I said, "No, not at all." I asked him what he was reading, so he turned the book around and looked at the cover for a second, and I think he said, "Cookie." Then his eyes lit up and he said, "Now I'm hungry!"

A few minutes later when I looked over at his stack of manga books, I asked him, "You're a pretty big fan of manga, huh?" He shrugged his shoulders and said "Eh." Then without provocation or warning, he read a few pages to me, and showed me the illustrations like a wide-eyed elementary school teacher. I had no idea what was happening in the story. It apparently ended with a character-based joke, but being completely unfamiliar with the characters, I didn't understand the joke and didn't really react to it. After looking at me for my reaction and getting no hint of one, he tried explaining the context of the joke by telling me all about the character. I still didn't understand. Then he asked if I ever read Bleach, and I told him I had not.

I started asking him questions about himself, but it seemed like he became disinterested in interacting with me once he realized he really wasn't annoying me.

People watching at the airport.

I was recently at the airport to meet my sister when she arrived on her flight. While I was waiting, I saw a man and woman sit down on a bench together. I assumed one of them had just arrived on a flight and they had just been reunited. He kissed her. She kissed back. Then the man appeared to reach his arm around the front of the woman to hug her. Instead, his hand landed on her left breast, and he began to grope her over her shirt as they sat on a bench in the middle of the airport. I wondered if he grabbed her breast by accident while trying to hug her, and then just decided to commit to his mistake and act like groping her was actually what he meant to do. I wondered if they had previously discussed it and come to an agreement that he could touch her whenever he wanted or if it was more of an unspoken thing where he just felt entitled because they're in a relationship. Then I realized that bench was an odd place for a reunion.

I've been doing some people watching lately.

Today when I was in the bookstore, there was a middle-aged woman sitting on the floor knitting in front of the shelf with all the books about knitting. She seemed kind of hidden, in between a cart of some sort and the column she was leaning against. I wondered if she was learning how to knit by reading the books without ever having purchased one of them. I wondered what was written in pencil on the pages of the notebook that was propped open in front of her as she knitted. I wondered if the store employees knew she was there. If any customers walked into the aisle she was sitting in, she would ask if she was in their way. I eavesdropped from the other side of the bookshelf as she recommended a knitting book to another middle-aged woman and then urged her to flip to the last page to read the very last line. I wondered what that last line was. I watched as the second woman's husband came to rescue her from the middle-aged woman who was knitting on the floor.