Friday, April 9, 2010

On a slow evening,

There is this random little (really, about five foot nothing,) old man who comes into the coffee shop every so often. He is usually wearing a cool (green) hat, and likes to talk about 'back in my day.'
This guy is cool.
Not a whole lot to him, just a jolly, friendly, old man. He has his own mug, gets his coffee with two one dollar bills, tips the remaining sixty five cents, and is on his way.

Not this time.

As we were chatting about the pleasantries of his day, I noticed his tie.
"Hey man, that is a pretty sweet tie you have there."

He proceeded to tell me about his tie.
Apparently, Jerry Garcia was a painter. Not a mediocre painter, either. He was terrible. His paintings were so shitty, that when his wife filed for bankruptcy, the state didn't even want the paintings. They took all of her shit, except for the paintings.

What the state didn't realize, but some other random fellow did, was the paintings potential.
Spread out onto a canvas, it was caca. Condensed into tie form, it was super wonderful.
Anyway, after a brief lesson in the history of Jerry Garcia limited edition ties, I asked him where I could get one.
It went something like this.
"Where can I go about acquiring such a tie, sir?"
He told me where. Kohl's, some other random place I had never heard of, and maybe two or three more random places I had never heard of. I wasn't really paying attention, to be honest.

Then the unthinkable happened.
He looks at me, and says, "When I come to this coffee shop, you guys make me miss college. This place is wonderful. You can just have my tie."
He took the tie off of his own neck, and gave it to me.
I was shocked.
It made my day.

Thank you for your random act of kindness, old man. I am one step closer to classy with this bad-ass, green, limited edition, Jerry Garcia tie. I'd like to think that when I am a jolly old man, with my cool hats and my own coffee mug, I'll be able to pass this tie off to some bored kid somewhere. He probably won't know who Jerry Garcia was, but that's alright.

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