Character Study: Janitorial Nascar

Leaning against his unloved mop, the custodian gazes out over his domain, his mouth hanging awkwardly agar. His camouflage-patterned truck cap covers a head that seems unusually suited to his greasy mullet. Every 3-4 minutes he makes a pass with his mop at the salty residue dragged in from the snowy walkway outside. He disappears now and then but reappears a few minutes later to again mop one step on a stairway or a couple tiles on the floor, with no obvious longterm strategy. It is only when he mounts his trusty ride-on floor cleaner that we glimpse what revs his engine, so to speak. You can see in his eyes, as he makes each left turn, that he's playing out his dream of driving in NASCAR. The competitive spirit catches him and he completes as many laps around the building's foyer as he can reasonably justify. His mullet wafts in the slight breeze at the top speed of a few miles per hour.

Character Study: British coffee biker

"That's not what you said!" he cried, tempering a wild gesture so as not to spill his coffee drink. The man was passionately holding a one sided argument with his female companion next to their shared motorcycle, the sleepy atmosphere of the grocery store parking lot extenuating the odd melodrama of the scene. Although most of the dialogue was obscured by either the bustle of the public setting or his half-hearted attempt to acknowledge it, the cadence of his British accent was always discernible. This was likely due to his voice's juxtaposition to its very American surroundings and seemingly American speaker.  One wonders what could have evoked such passion in this leather clad gentleman, this English Fonze. How long had he been traveling in the States and how many women had been on the wrong side of his latte-fueled tirades? Sadly, nothing remains of this enigmatic road-warrior except the brief impression left on the author.