in sane
I’m doing some work at The Green Muse, a coffeeshop in South Austin. I ordered a coffee for here and a side of hummus. The pretty young woman at the counter rang it up, and, with tax, it came up to be $4.04. “That will be four-oh-four,” she said.
While fishing through my wallet, I asked, “are all of your prices palindromes?”
She paused to think, smiled, and then said, “Oh yeah! I wish!”
She said that palindromes actually pop up quite a bit at the coffeeshop. “I’ll bet they follow you around, don’t they.”
“Only because I’m insane,” I explained.
“I find that the number fourteen follows me around,” she revealed, “Do any numbers follow you around?”
At this point, I wasn’t sure if she was making silly small talk, or if she genuinely thought numbers follow people. I told her that the number sixteen might follow me.
After asking me about my birthday, she told me she would bring my hummus out to me.
After setting up camp at a seat by the window, the woman came by with my hummus. She told me, “It’s good that you’re insane because sane is good and you want to be in sane, not out sane.”
“If this woman is kidding, she is really funny,” I thought to myself, “if she’s not, she’s pretty darn kooky.” I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to laugh or not, so I just smiled and nodded.
