Jennifer and I had a great day out on Saturday. She was kind enough to pick me up, and then we headed out to downtown Seattle. We drove around for a bit looking for bridal shops, but we soon decided that we weren’t in the mood, so we parked at a garage on 3rd & University and walked down to Pike Place Market.
It was a lot of fun walking around, like last time we went to hang out there. We passed by a Chinese tea shop which was having a free tea tasting, and I ended up getting some Blue Tea that’s supposed to help with diabetes and high blood pressure. It was kind of amusing, because I got it because for one it was yummy, but also because if my dad liked it, maybe it could help him, you know? But as soon as I mentioned it to my mom she immediately thought it was an excellent idea for my dad and asked me to bring it over when we visited on Sunday. When we got there and I told my dad about it, he acted like I had bought it for him… haha! So in the end they repaid me for the tea, we drank some during the day, and I left it with him. Hopefully it will actually help him.
Anyway, after we stopped by there on Saturday, we mostly just wandered around to different shops enjoying the weather. For mother’s day, I got my mom a small loaf of wheat and gluten-free banana bread, and a mini New York cheesecake. For lunch, I went and had a gyro and shared a small smoothie with Jennifer.
Josh was nice enough to hand me $60 before we headed out, but I didn’t spend more than half of that, so I was pretty happy.
Regarding the subject for this post, something else interesting happened to me that afternoon. Jen and I were walking down 1st street when some guys started talking to us… it turned out that she’d cut their hair in Oak Harbor just two days ago! Since it was Jen’s birthday and they knew it, they wanted to take her out for a drink up in Belltown, which was “a bit of a hike” up the road. I wasn’t really interested in going, so I told her I’d be across the street at Seattle’s Best Coffee.
I got my grande iced vanilla latté and went up a few steps to a landing with armchairs to sit in. About six chairs, actually, and I sat at the one in the back, in the corner. For a few minutes I was by myself; that is, until a man came up onto the landing and sat in his own chair next to mine. Since I was in a corner, there were two chairs “next” to me… each with a table between me and the chair. He was on my left, facing perpendicularly, toward my right.
After a minute or two I reach for a newspaper and at the same time he decides it’s time to read. The only words we exchanged were me asking him if he wanted any of the paper I had. One thing I noticed though: every time I made a big-ish movement he’d actually turn his head to look at me. Of course I pretended not to notice, but after a couple of times it seemed a bit odd, especially because there was nothing behind me but a wall, me being in the corner and all.
So I put my paper away and suddenly he’s done with his as well. Of course at the time I wasn’t really in a “something is fishy here” mindset, so while I remember all of this later, it didn’t really cause a red flag at the time. After a minute, you can guess what he did. He started talking to me. Now, I like some good conversation as much as the next person, but usually when it’s conversation with a stranger in a place we both might be awhile, I’m not so interested. Usually it’s just idle chit-chat, and when it gets awkward it gets really annoying. Since I was going to be sitting at this coffee shop indefinitely this could be a problem, because I didn’t want to have to get up and leave just because I wanted to get away from a bad conversation.
Needless to say, that’s exactly what I got, bad conversation. He asked me where I was from, and I kind of led the conversation from there because he didn’t seem all that good at asking me new questions about myself. And to top it all off he was incredibly agreeable! How awful. There’s nothing worse than a conversation with your bullshit detector going off all the time. “Oh really? I love hiking!” Sigh.
I mentioned who I was with and that she’d be meeting me soon which I was quickly hoping would be right away. Once she did show up, I managed to talk to her for a bit about her time out with the “boys” and kind of left our new “friend” alone. I kind of hoped that would be the end of things, because I noticed him finish his coffee anyway (coincidentally, it was a small coffee).
Well, he did leave. Actually, he got up and left without saying goodbye! Considering that it was him that started a conversation I thought he was a bit ticked that I was talking to Jenn so much. Not that I minded, it meant that I didn’t have to deal with him any longer. At this point I start recounting the story of this odd person to Jenn. Luckily she thought it was pretty amusing.
Ok. Since I still had some coffee left of my own we just naturally sat around for a few minutes while I finished it. Want to know what happened next? You won’t believe it, trust me.
He came back.
Yep, the kinda creepy guy came back and walked right up the landing to where I was and said to me, “here, I thought these would look beautiful on you” and hands me a little plastic baggy. Inside were earrings, two green ones. He mumbled something about the green matching my shirt right before I said, “oh. You shouldn’t have. Really. Honest.” If the earrings had been obviously worth more than the $7 they looked, I certainly wouldn’t have taken them. But as it was I was sure that he didn’t have any use for a girls pair of earrings in any case, so I thought the best bet was to just accept them and leave it at that.
Unfortunately for him my ears aren’t even pierced. I mentioned that and he tried to talk about a friend who might be able to re-fit them as clip-ons, at which point I made up some bullshit about how easy it would be for me to do it myself or something like that.
Then the big question came. “Uhh, would you like to go on a date sometime?” After the initial, uh, bewilderment, I said to him, “Oh I’m sorry, but I’m with someone.” Seems like the kind of thing someone should have asked before you go out and buy a girl cheap earrings. Jenn thought that it was cute but I’m a bit more skeptical about the ordeal.
So I give him the number for the rejection hotline, but just in case Jenn was on the ball and said to me, “hey Bev, can I have my cell phone back?” trying to tell him that I didn’t have a phone, or a phone number for him to ask for. She immediately used it to call her own cell phone and had a fake conversation with our “friend” saying, “oh sure! We’re just leaving now, we’ll be there in about 5mins.” Totally awesome, thanks Jenn!
Well, she hangs up and asks the guy how old he is. “Oh, 35.” 35?! See, he didn’t look that old at first so none of my radars went off right away. I would have guessed late-twenties at first. Of course he asks me how old I am (note that he didn’t ask Jennifer) and I reply that I’m 21. No idea whether he was phased by that or not.
That’s about all I can remember about the time at the coffee shop… after all it did happen a week ago. But the rest of the day went quite nicely. Josh got a huge kick out of what happened, and wished he could have been there in his kilt to scare the guy off. -grin-
Yay for creepy guys. Oh wait.
