It's 6:45 am and I'm sitting at the counter of a Waffle House. It was supposed to ice up last night so I left early this
morning, anticipating gridlock. But the ice didn't come and the traffic didn't either. I'm guessing a lot of folks stayed
home. I once read that many people in Atlanta take icy roads as a sign from God to go run their car into a tree, which is
difficult to disprove statistically.
There's a cute waitress sitting next to me telling me her whole life story. I've known her less than eight minutes and
already know more about her than most of the people I work with.
She lives with her best friend. Her best friend's mom is a waitress at this very Waffle House. Her best friend's boyfriend
is her boyfriend's brother, and their mom is a waitress here too. It sounds complicated, I know, but no more so than any of
the Star Wars movies.
She wants to name her baby Aidan if it's a boy. She's kind of young and doesn't look pregnant, so I'm guessing that she's
talking about a future, hypothetical baby. She likes the name Aidan because it's Celtic, and not because it's the name of
a popular young Hollywood actor, and I don't bother pointing out that it's trendy and pretentious, like naming a girl Heather
would have been 15 years ago. I figure it's only polite, since she hasn't seemed to notice that I'm writing down everything
that she's saying to me as she's saying it. And at least she doesn't say "Keltic" with the hard "C" which would also be pretentious
and annoying, even if it is the proper way to pronounce the word. People who say the word that way like to pretend that they
know more about it than they really do. I blame Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I don't know why.
The guy sitting next to me on the other side has the newspaper open to the comics page and he's scribbling on it with
a pen. He's not doing the crossword puzzle, either; he seems to be drawing swirly things all over the characters' faces.
Hold on, I'll go look. I'll just sit up straight and kind of glance over his shoulder.
Oh my God. That's exactly what he's doing. I'm scared now.
But at least the coffee is good.
The waitress just called him "Kevin". Weird. I've never heard of a psycho chainsaw killer named Kevin. It just doesn't
sound menacing enough. Unless his middle name is "Wayne".
