Geography

See also: Homer’s photos and observations from the Pima County courthouse yesterday.

I’m having breakfast at Café Colère and a voice that sounds like an older woman who has been talking into a phone since she walked in the door and even while ordering a coffee is suddenly nearby saying, “That looks good. Having some breakfast?”

I look up and the voice belongs to a clean-cut Mexican-American man six feet tall or so, with salt-and-pepper hair. He’s asking my name. He’s wearing a white, pressed, short sleeve shirt. There’s a Wildcats blue and red lanyard with an ID tag tucked into his shirt pocket the way specialists and technicians who have left the building do.

“Hi Richard, I’m Jerry. Having some breakfast? Going to work? I’m just getting some coffee. I’m not going to work. Just going to do my volunteer work at the senior center. I hope they’ll hire me but they usually just have volunteers. I like your Converse. Do you like Converse? There’s a store at El Con having a buy one get the next pair half-off sale. What size do you wear? Me too. Richard, I want you to give me your shoes when you’re going to get rid of them. Let me see the soles.”

He sets his coffee on the table next to what’s left of my plate of scrambled eggs, kneels down under the table, grabs my left foot and examines the sole.

“Hey those are in good shape!”

He stands up and gently brushes off his knees.

“You’ve got lots of miles on those to go. They’re in good shape. I’m just getting coffee while I wait to meet with my job coach. He makes me write everything down and bring it to our meetings now instead of me calling him all the time when I think of something because I just can’t do that anymore. Hopefully I’ll hear back from Fry’s or Safeway. My family doesn’t want me to work in a restaurant because I need to lose some weight and there’s always food around. Are you going to work? What kind of work do you do that you can wear your Converse to work? Here they will charge you $.75 for your refill, Richard. Have a nice day take care of those shoes for me!”

How effortlessly we forget the Spanish word for mud flaps.

That really long German word describing the overwhelming angst one feels when it’s way past time to trim the toenails.

(Thanks, PK)

In Mexico, supermarket grocery baggers are usually elementary school age kids or senior citizens—all working for just tips. Unless you buy a lot of groceries, you hand them whatever coins are in your change. It takes some getting used to at first and when you forget or pay with a card and find yourself with no change it’s awkward. Yesterday at a Whole Foods in Tucson I instinctively started to give the twenty-something man who bagged my greens and almond milk a tip of thirty-seven cents.

So I suppose I’m getting used to it.