Ran into a human this evening. Thought I would share.
His name is George, he works the late shift at the liquor store around the corner from the hotel where I’m living this week.
He had just mopped the floor when I came in. He told me this stunningly ordinary fact. I said “hey, I don’t think I tracked in too much crap.” He was like “I don’t care about that, man, I just don’t want you to fall.”
Silence reigned for about a minute while I looked at the shelves.
He asked “what are you looking for this evening?”
I replied “happiness, same as most evenings.”
“Aren’t we all. What do you you usually like?”
I don’t know why I broke out of the script at that point – but I went sideways: “Well, I’ve got a brown ale fermenting at home now – so maybe something that reminds me of home.”
He went with it: “I’ve got 10 gallons of IPA in secondary. Do you do all-grain or extract?”
And we were off. We talked about brewing, about his time in the Marine Corps, about family, about friends. He pushed me to a chocolate stout, but I went with the hyper-local belgian style ale. He’s working in single gallon batches on a hard apple cider recipe for next year. I shared my friend’s time tested approach.
We talked for about 20 minutes – then a raft of other customers came in for last call and I paid up and left.
Pay attention – you never know when you might run into another human being.
