People who watch people. . .
Are the luckiest people. And I am one of these people.

I found myself in Pittsburgh earlier this week, a sort-of-last-minute business trip to the freezing northeast. Since spring had already sprung here in Texas, I was none too excited to get my coat back out of the closet and walk around in temperatures where I could see my breath dissipate before me.

I prefer to not see my breath, frozen or otherwise, thank you very much.

So, being trapped in Pittsburgh for a conference, I had no choice but to make the best of it. And how do I do that? I watch people, of course.

Most people I know have to be doing something all the time. Any spare moment, they are searching for a Reader's Digest or something to do to fill an odd minute here or there. Me? I am quite content to do nothing but sit and stare if that's what needs to be done. I love watching people. They are highly entertaining. And since during this trip we had lots of time to sit and wait for planes, or taxis, or for conference seminars to start and finish, I had plenty of opportunity to watch people existing around me.

Thank goodness Pittsburgh had many interesting people to watch. They kept me alive throughout this trip, I'm quite positive.

Out of the billions of people I watched, here are a few of my favorites:

1. Dirty Old Coat Rack Man-
I first met Dirty Old Coat Rack Man at the coat rack where I was actually retrieving my coat from having deposited it there earlier. After I left my coat, I soon realized that the cold was not strictly kept to the out of doors, as the convention center was freakishly cold. So, I went back for my coat at the self-serve coat rack. As I retrieved my black coat from the myriad of black coats, I turned around to see what might have been a sweet old man, had he not opened his mouth to speak to me. He chuckled and said something about thinking I was the coat check girl. When I smiled and said that I wasn't the coat check girl, he then said he was hoping I was the coat check girl because he loves to have pretty young girls check his coat. GROSS. I ran away.

Little did I know that this would not be my last encounter with Dirty Old Coat Rack Man. As I sat in a room waiting for my last seminar to begin, I made the mistake of leaving an empty chair to my left. Before I knew it, there was Dirty Old Coat Rack Man, trying to sit down next to me. He was with people. I'm not sure if they realized how much of a dirty old man he really is. He never said anything else to me, but every time he did make a comment to one of his people, he made it quite loudly. I'm guessing he had some hearing issues, speaking loudly so he could hear himself. The rest of the room heard him, too. He also coughed an old man phlegm cough throughout the two-hour seminar. And, he smelled of old man and pickles. I'm not sure why I smelled pickles, as we did not have pickles for lunch. But there was definitely an aroma of pickle. Mixed with old man. At one point he pulled an ointment out of his pocket and rubbed it on his hands. Not lotion. Ointment. Then the air was that of old man, pickles, and ointment.

Not a collection of scents I ever hope to encounter again.

2. Long-Haired Nail Biting Man.
In my first seminar, I chose a seat. A nice safe seat, I thought. Soon a middle-aged man sat in front of me. He had really long hair, pulled into a pony-tail. He also had a very long scraggly beard. However, I did not really pay him any attention until I noticed he kept biting his nails. A lot. Right in front of me. Making lots of nail-biting noise. And looking all around the room as he did it. It was like a mini-show, just for me. Giving me all the angles of nail-biting glory. It was disgusting. I hate the sound of nail-biting. I kept seeing him shake hands with people afterwards, and I was even more disgusted knowing his hands had been in his mouth for two hours. I had witnessed all two hours of nail-biting madness. The horror . . .

3. Creepy Gerry-Curl Looking Around Guy.
As if to carry on the torch of Long-Haired Nail Biting Man, during the Dirty Old Coat Rack Man seminar, I was also sitting behind a man sporting the tightest gerry-curl I have ever seen. And it was blonde hair- definitely a rare specimen of gerry-curl. The man would frequently reach up and run his hands over the curls, as though to make sure all of his tiny tight curls were still in place. I'm pretty sure that tornadic winds would not have been able to budge a single curl, yet he kept checking on them. And much like Long-Haired Nail Biting Man, he kept looking all over the room. For two hours. In front, to the side, and most annoyingly, behind. Near and around me. All of the action in the room was in front of us, yet he kept looking around, staring at people. Being a professional people-watcher, I have developed a science of looking without staring. It is imperative to good people-watching skills. But this guy was intent on looking around and staring. It was distracting. But perhaps he was showing off his gerry-curl to the entire room because he was quite proud of the curl.

It was a rare curl, indeed.

4. Large Angry Phone-Ringing Lady.
The last seminar of the day proved to be the most fruitful for people watching. Because as I sat next to Dirty Old Coat Rack Man, and behind Creepy Gerry-Curl Looking Around Guy, in the front row sat Large Angry Phone-Ringing Lady. She was large, and she wore a bright pink sweater that only seemed to accent her large-ness. Every time a cell phone or pager would go off in the room somewhere, she would spin around in her seat and glare in whatever direction the cell phone or pager sound came from. It was like she was personally offended at the sounds of wireless technology. Her face would get red, she would take a deep huffy breath, and she would roll her eyes as though the room was full of the rudest people on the planet and she was the only one who was perfectly attending the seminar, in the front row, honoring the panel of presenters with her cell phone-less presence.

Personally, I agree that it's rude to leave cell phones and pagers on during meetings or seminars. But the more this lady was flustered by the increasing number of cell phones going off around the room, the more I enjoyed watching her increasingly agitated activity in the front row. She stopped short of saying anything to anyone. But she sure put on quite a show of annoyance and disgust.

While these are people I hope to never spend time with again, I am thankful for their presence in Pittsburgh. They entertained me during a most critical time of desperation and longing to be elsewhere.

And like I always say, watch people before they watch you. The story is better that way.

C.T.