The Dipsea Stairs are not the mode of transportation that a rushed woman armed with a laptop bag wants to use when she has to make her Skype date. I wish you could have seen me, dressed in my urban garb red-corduroy pants, posed as a tree-hugger rushing down the redwood stairs. By the time I got my coffee in town, and was told that the only free wireless (because my mantra is that no one should ever have to pay for wireless) was at the library down the street, I had five minutes to go before my Skype date.
I had forgotten deodorant that day, so I stank. I hid my coffee cup behind the outdoor ashtray and entered into the beautiful building filled with books and rules. I found a table next to a storybook window that looked out onto the redwoods, got out my headphones, launched my Skype, and then hid between the Fiction Authors stacks. No one was around, so Nikki and I got to share what was up in our lives for a good thirty minutes. But our date was finally interrupted when the librarian came to find a book. At first, she didn’t know what I was up to, crouched over my laptop with headphones while speaking quietly into a microphone, but then librarians are usually smart, so she spoke up.
“Um, there are no cell phones in the library,” she said, just barely waving her finger at me.
I felt like the teenager I had been in high school who also got caught passing notes.
Nikki and I had a laugh and flipped over to the instant messenger-like chat aspect of Skype in order to not break the rules (another mantra I don’t follow). Then we made our next date for Skype, but this time I promised to stay in the city.
