TINY PLASTIC SEAL

It wasn't odd that I had nothing better to do at 8:30 on a Saturday night than sit at the cafe at Border's bookstore in Marin County. I sipped my hot chocolate, paged through the latest Hollywood Reporter and watched as the people around me, who also were as pathetic as I, read books they had no intention of buying. I was there to people watch. The regulars were there, who probably say the same thing about me since I'm there just as often. There's the transvestite with the gel-injected lips, and the man with the jet black hair was once again sitting and playing a game of chess with the man with the long gray beard. There's the old man with hair down to his butt, who I see riding his bike everywhere around town. The 30-year-old man and his 15-year-old girlfriend come in and study together. I always wonder what they're studying. Like I said, the Saturday night crowd was the regulars, except for one woman I saw sitting across from me. She was also reading the Hollywood Reporter. Good taste. She had a Snapple bottle from the cafe. She shook it fiercely, making sure to blend every sweet and tart particle for an even flavor. She went to open the cap and noticed the plastic seal that was there to keep her from being poisoned. She picked and picked away at the seal, but it was only coming off in little pieces, not giving her the chance to get to her beverage. Was the seal Super Glued on? She was seriously working at it for a good four minutes. With every piece of seal she ripped away, the look on her face got worse. One of complete desperation and disgust of the fact that she couldn't seem to make this stupid thing work. But it didn't seem like she was only disgusted with the seal. It seemed as though, with every piece of seal that came off into her hand, she gave up more and more with her life. It seemed that this one event at Border's was ruining her entire week. Something as trivial as a plastic seal on her drink could upset her to the point of utter frustration, because it symbolized the way her life was. Toiling through the days, trying to get that one thing she's been thirsting for, but only stumbling over each tiny step in her life. I looked down into my notebook, trying to make it less obvious that I was seeing her going through what she considered a disaster. I looked up from my book again and noticed how she had her head in her hands with her face peeking between her fingers. I looked again at her and noticed that she was inside of a frame. It was a mirror. It was me.