My Shrinking World

Most afternoons, I allow myself an hour at a local coffee shop.  I sip a tall iced coffee, eat a small cookie, glance at the headlines on the overhead television screen and then settle in to spend a quiet hour or so in the company of my Kindle. Sometimes, this is the high point of my day.  It is my daily indulgence if you will, my non spiritual quiet time.

The employees all know me.  I guess I am the "Norm" of this little "Cheers."  When the employees see me coming, they often change the satellite radio station to the Sinatra Channel or doo wop because they know I like it. I am usually the only person in the room except for employees.  It is normally quiet, friendly and peaceful. 

However, of late, there have been problems in my sanctuary.  For one thing, a Muslim intellectual

from a nearby university has taken to hanging around about the same time that I usually show up.  Americans would call him a lay missionary for his zeal in engaging unwitting passersby in conversations about the wisdom of Islam and the popular misconceptions concerning the "religion of peace." If you let him go long, he will quickly lead you into the five pillars of Islam in all of their glory and do it all with his face six inches from yours, his hot breath wafting over your face.  I have had to cut my respite short  twice in the past week to avoid him.

Today, I decided to show up half an hour early to avoid him.  Moments after I arrived, an inspector with the Tulsa County Health Department came in.  She was an attractive, very well dressed middle aged lady.  After a brief inspection she sat down at the table next to me to write her report. We exchanged a few pleasantries.  I apologized for appearing to stare at her and explained that the television set was directly over her head and I was following the news story being shown.

A few moments later, a loud young Millenial drove up on a motorcyle with a casually well dressed black girl on the b*tch seat.  He had the typical man bun/ponytail sexually androgenous look of his ilk and she looked for all the world like an up and coming feminist studies or black studies professor in the making.  She definitely looked like she was the alpha (insert gender appropriate non-offensive gender choice pronoun here) in that relationship.

First, the male appearing Millenial tried to engage the Health Department worker in conversation.  She brushed him off.  The couple then sat down on a sofa a few feet away and he said loudly to me, "I see you are wearing a gun.  What kind is it?'  I replied that I did not want to discuss it.  He then said, "Oh, I guess you just like to brandish it."

What is itabout this generation that forces them to make an issue out of things they don't understand?  Make no mistake, the question the Millenial asked was not designed to get gun info.  The words "Glock 43 Gen 4 with a 25 cent trigger job in a Blade Tech Kydex IWB holster" would not have satisfied him. I doubt that he would have really understood them. His body language, eyes and speech patterns all indicated a liberal troll on the make to start an argument or create a scene that could not end well for me no matter what happened. 

To say that I was angry does not begin to describe my feelings.  I wanted to say a lot of things like, "You're an idiot if you think my sitting here in the corner quietly reading my Kindle with two inches of gun butt sticking out of my waistband under the table is brandishing a weapon."  I really wanted to say, "Bud, open carry is legal in Oklahoma especially and while I don't do it often, I am licensed to carry this weapon just about any way any time I choose to."

But, I didn't say anything.  Talking to jerks like that usually only escalates an already degrading situation. I just began pulling my shirt tail out over my weapon.  However, as I did that I asked myself, "Why are you accommodating this jerk?" The peace of my quiet time had been broken.  There was no need for me share space with that type of jerk.  I simply packed up and and walked away, muttering under my breath.

But sadly, my world gets smaller and more annoying all of the time.