I wanted to go to church this morning. I didn’t go last week because I was getting sick. I didn’t go the week before because I had to work. So I wanted to go back, reconnect a little, and see some of the people I’m just starting to actually know there. But as I slowly started getting ready for the day, I realized that the hour-long drive there might actually be dangerous in my state, so I gave up and resigned myself to another long, tedious, miserable day on the couch staring at the same walls, thinking the same thoughts, and doing extensive cost-benefit analyses every time I contemplate getting up to do such strenuous things as make tea.
I knew this would start messing with my head, and sure enough, after a few hours spent resenting the sunshine and the texture on my walls and the unrelenting wasteland that is Sunday morning TV and the corduroy of the couch and… well, you get the idea. After a few hours of that I realized that I’d been miscalculating those costs and benefits and that the consequences of staying on the couch were far greater than those of getting out of the house.
Unfortunately, the coffee shop was so full that there wasn’t a seat to be had. Strangers were already making themselves as narrow as possible so as not to actually touch each other while sitting three across on the couches. Students and townies were already awkwardly sharing tables with each other. A few brave souls were even bundled up and sitting outside on the bank of four old theater seats (you know, the wooden kind where the seat part folds up to meet the back, and where it’s never quite clear who gets to use the arm rests).
“Cost. Benefit. I could go back home to stare at those textured walls, or I could try to take a walk,” I told myself. And so I bought some coffee (caffeinated, for the first time in weeks, because at this point moving is more important to me that being a purist) and set out on a walk. 40 minutes later, after having walked 4 blocks (thankfully the short sides of those blocks), rested on a park bench for about 10 minutes, and then walked back, there were seats open at the coffee shop.
And so here I am.
There are music wars going on behind the counter, so every few minutes the rock music stops abruptly in the middle of a riff and a mellow singer-songwriter type comes on. A few minutes later someone else will interrupt the long string of “My doctor says I’ll be fine, but I’m feelin’ blue. My doctor says I’m fine, but I’m feelin’ blue. Ooooh, my doctor says -” and back comes the driving beat and hoarse-voiced singer.
By now I’m pretty much the only post-collegiate adult here. Living so close to a college means that Sunday afternoons at the coffee shop means fighting for space amongst the chemistry textbooks, backpacks, highlighters, and laptops. One girl has brought an apple, complete with apple corer. The corer now rests on the rim of her empty water glass, the perfectly cylindrical core down in the glass itself, and she slowly and distractedly pops apple slices into her mouth in between highlighter swipes. Another girl has basically moved in and could probably survive here until Tuesday without leaving if it weren’t for her class schedule. She’s well-equipped with fruit, bags of nuts, a jar of Eucerine cream, her phone, her laptop, three or four notebooks, and a good twenty pounds of text books. Another girl is telling her friend, “I don’t know if legwarmers are in any more, but I’m wearing them anyway. It’s cold!”
And still the sun is shining. And I still resent its cheeriness. But at least there is no texture on these walls, and this couch is not made of corduroy. And I can amuse myself by trying to guess just how long before one of the employees will lose patience with the music. (Oh. There it went. Not long, then.) And so I think I’ll tackle some of the work that has to get done before tomorrow and then make my way back to the couch, where some ibuprofen will probably make short work of these aching legs (which are reminding me that they didn’t have a vote when I decided to go for that walk, earlier).
And still the sun is shining.