Abe Lincoln would have a lot to say if he visited a college-town coffee shop for the evening.
“I have plenty for you to do,” Lincoln would say to the lanky, my-hair’s-so-long-you-can’t-see-my-eyes young man standing with his two buddies at the cash register.
He wears blue, the other two of the Three Stooges gray (ironically, the colors of the Civil War). Their acquaintance, a girl with a ponytail and white-striped black athletic pants, wonders what they’re doing tonight. The blonde-haired wonder says he doesn’t have anything to do.
Others are writing papers. Later, ponytail girl is supposedly doing homework, but her iPhone’s pretty distracting, too. Eventually, she leaves, her thick nursing NCLEX book at ease on the table with her iPhone.
Nothing or papers, Lincoln could use these coffee shoppers to help put the country back together.
“That’s probably pretty expensive for the factories to produce. Why do you leave it where people can steal it?” Lincoln would say that, too, to everyone. Especially the guy with the pink tee and earrings and his track jacket-adorned female friend at the table near the front window. She wants her friends in the southwest corner of the room – the Three Stooges – to watch their stuff for a bit.
By stuff, she means an open bag of kettle-cooked potato chips, an empty plastic cup, her Vera Bradley backpack and wristlet (different patterns, mind you), her similarly flowered binder, a pen or marker, his receipt for their food, her Apple laptop, laptop charger, a colored leather Bible, and her iPhone, sitting on the window ledge, plugged into the wall.
The Stooges agree to watch this smorgasbord of twenty-something Christian college-hood. But they don’t have to watch it all. She takes the iPhone because her friend’s was stolen from the Hive last week. The Bible stays on the table: apparently, it’s not at risk. Hopefully Lincoln didn’t see that.
Lincoln would also say: “Ah-ha. You all know each other. That’s just like the North and the South, where brother fights against brother.”
And they do all know each other. A preppy couple studies intensely in their corner. The female-half leaves and the guy – button-up, khaki shorts, boat shoes and all – converses with a girl in the northwest corner. She wears a light-blue Cedarville basketball shirt and flies solo tonight.
What did he tell her? He left a message, which she tells his female-half when she returns: he had run to campus to grab his notebook.
So that’s what Lincoln would say if he visited a college-town coffee shop for an evening. And, in this case, he’s actually been there all along. He appears at least twice on the north wall, once on the south. And even his general, Grant, rests on a shelf in the southwest corner.
Most importantly Lincoln’s 3-D head sits on the window ledge, the one where the iPhone sat until its owner grabbed it when she left. Lincoln can save a country, but don’t trust him with an iPhone.
Note: I wrote this for an assignment for Feature-Writing class at Cedarville University. We were told to observe a scene somewhere and write a 500-700 word story about it. I chose to observe an hour or so at Stoney Creek Roasters in Cedarville, Ohio.
