Storytelling

This past Friday I got on a bus from Nashua NH to the Boston Logan airport. The bus arrived 20 minutes before boarding was scheduled to close. I applied for global entry the past spring, driving up to the remote town of Derby line on the Canadian border with Vermont. The border patrol officer doing my investigation made me wait for 30 minutes past my appointment time, despite no apparent line. The actual interview took five. He was impressed by my United credit card, which I had used to pay for the application. He told me when prompted, “I hear that Roasters does a good breakfast quiche. I didn’t tell you that though.” Apparently border patrol agents are expected to remain impartial, and the thickly jowled man took this obligation seriously, though not enough to prevent him from indirectly spreading the good word of his favorite breakfast diner.

When I left the border and drove the 15 minutes to Roasters, I was made to wait behind a man and his two children for a table to come available. The man had curly black hair and looked slightly overwhelmed, not wanting to disappoint his kids and provoke rebuke from their absent mother. I wondered why he was out to a late 11:30 am lunch on a Thursday. Shouldn’t they be in school? Roasters sat atop a steep ridge. A sketchy wooden overlook that barred off vistors not 15 feet from the back of the building spoke of long years in business. There was a rusted bike just over the edge of the ridge, too far down to try and retrieve safely. I went back around to the front of the small building and took a plastered stairway up to the second floor. At some point this might’ve been the apartment where the owners lived. But now, I was welcomed in by a placard with a picture of a lounging naked woman to an out of place sex shop. I smiled towards the counter, and told them that I would let them know if I needed any help. I wanted to look at the sex toys. Who doesn’t want to look at the sex toys? It wasn’t a large selection, and I would’ve been aghast to spend over seventy dollars on a life size replica of Hugh Manita’s dick or a fleshlight with realistic human lips, lipstick not included. The DVDs stared at me from another era, where internet porn hadn’t yet proliferated, and we were ashamed if someone found our copy of Goddess Bless Me! II under the bed.

I sat in parallel to an old lady who slowly, slowly picked away at her American cheese omelet. She smiled at me, and I waved back. The wait wasn’t long, and I listened to a man speak French on a business call in the back corner. Of course, we were next to the border. But it seemed bathetic to cross the border just for breakfast. When I got bored, I turned on Youtube on a low volume, burning away my best attempts at a mindful boredom. Passive observation passed the rest of the experience through a dusty filter as I shoveled down my eggs and sausage, before beginning the long drive home.

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