Scene from a SW Coffeshop

Large gentleman in front of me at the Starbucks wearing a bright blue Adidas shirt, shorts, socks, sandals (hey, that's my look!). As he's getting coffee, woman personing the espresso machine says "Hey Frank, how was your weekend?"

The man I take to be named Frank replies, "Oh I had to work on my car this weekend, so not much happening."

"Oh, what's wrong with your car?" the friendly barista asks.

"That's what I had to figure out!" said Frank. "My Infinity was running really rough. Turns out, a friend I lent it to put the wrong kinda gas in it. That's a tastey fix, I tell ya."

This is what I know at this point. Man is named Frank, he dresses casually at 7 in the morning, he is a regular at Starbucks, he drives an Infinity and he has a friend who put gas in the Infinity that is so wrong that Frank had to siphon the gas out. What kind of gas is this? I am wondering.

"Oh, that's horrible," the barista says with an actual measure of concern in her voice.

"Yeah, I got her running, but I gotta change the plugs, I think they're all fouled up from that bad gas. Then I did the front brakes on my Porsche."

"Wow, that's a lot of car repair."

"Yeah, then I replaced the front axel on my Pathfinder."

"How many cars to you have Frank?"

I should point out here that Frank, a man I think I could spend weeks following, observing, and learning from, has taken the lid off the sugar pourer and dumped about a quarter of the container into his 20 ounce coffee (I know it has an Italian name. Not knowing the names of the Starbucks products is the only way I can look myself in the review mirror when I get back in the car), he then adds a health amount of cream, stirs, tastes, and retakes the lid off the surgar to add more. Frank.

"I've got four. My wife has a Mercedes," says Frank.

"We're a three car family," says the barista who has, for reasons more mysterious than that gas conumdrum decided to compete with Frank. "Well, two cars and a scooter."

"Scooters don't count," I hear Frank say as I make my way out the door and into the slightly less colorful world that lies on the outside of my local Starbucks.