MAC MAN!

I’m sitting at the coffee shop, outside, under the awning, typing on my laptop, late afternoon light slanting down the street backlighting the sycamores, readers, talkers, workers surrounding me, when a large cloud of smoke envelopes my head. Pipe smoke.

“Hey, Mac Man!”

I look up, and this man, probably in his sixties, aviator shades pushing into BluBlocker territory, is looking at me, smiling. Smoke plumes out of a pipe clenched tightly in his broad grin. “Hey, Mac Man!”

The sun shines behind him, through the cloud of pipe smoke, so I squint, trying to discern if he is, in fact, talking to me, and what, exactly, he is talking about. “Wha?” I manage, eyebrow cocked, lower right lip fish-hooked in dumbfounded stupefaction.

“Mac. Macintosh. You know. I hate having to use that . . . Windows, when I’m out here on vacation.”

Ah. My computer. “. . . yeah.”

“That’s a . . . PowerBook . . . five? Yeah. With the Mac X OS. Tiger.”

“Yup. It’s a good computer.”

“Yeah.” He begins walking away, but turns back. “I hear 11 is coming, but,” he shrugs, “Pshh!”