three encounters

Wispy white hair framing her face, the woman stood at the counter clutching a small laminated document, requesting a copy. She held a yellowing driver's license, the plastic peeling from the curled edges. Long after she let the copy shop employee take the license from her fingers, her soft, worn hand stayed outstretched as she stood by, watching protectively. "It's small, I know," she said. He said he would see what he could do.

Eyes full of hope, her few words conveyed a poignancy and wistfulness that would normally make me feel a little uncomfortable in a public settling, wary about what might come next. Perversely, it became impossible not to eavesdrop once I heard the quaver in her voice.

It was the boredom that did it. There was nothing else to do, but look at the almost empty card rack, the piles of unpurchased pre-copied college packets, the special offers for printing wedding and graduation invitations, or to watch the woman at the counter.

Moments later, she was cradling an enlargement in her hand, its colors as muted as the original, the image now large enough for all in the room to see. Although the clothes and hair of the woman in the photograph reminded me of how my grandmother dressed and wore her hair in the late 60s and early 70s, the copied image resembled a few-years-younger version of the woman standing at the counter. As she gazed at a near mirror image of herself, the woman's eyes were liquid, her smile matching the one she cupped in her hands.

She thanked the employee warmly, then paid and left, her gaze on the image, her eyes shining.

Soon after, the door squeaked open and in walked a silver-haired, mahogany-skinned woman, a glint in her eyes, determination in her slow, deliberate steps. While she waited for her copies to be finished, she was drawn to the card rack. One by one she began to pick out cards, exclaiming over each one. Those she chose all featured photographs of downy soft kittens, stretching out sleepily next to each other, snuggling, yawning, darling and kitschy all at once. She had to have them, she said, when she paid for them and her copies. As she left, she was talking excitedly about the friends she was going to send them to. "Oh, she's going to love this one . . ."

Outside, a new, oversized SUV eased, gradually, slowly, into the shop's disabled parking space. The elderly driver maneuvered his way down and out of the front seat at about the same speed. First he worked one leg, then the other to the ground, letting gravity take its course. At last he stood, then swiveled and marched purposefully to the door, standing a few feet away. He seemed to walk in slow motion, arms swinging mightily to aid his momentum, the length of each stride almost imperceptible.

Once inside, he removed his hat, then looked around. After he had sized us up, he greeted everyone earnestly with a nod of the head: "Good afternoon," "Good afternoon," "Good afternoon." Only then did he begin his order, formally and politely, a gentleman to the very core.

For a moment I could imagine him as a young man, perhaps a soldier, then a civil servant in middle age, clinging to order and protocol as the world accelerated and passed on by. The world and its future may well depend on people like him, and on their unwavering determination not to lower standards, but to maintain the social niceties and decorum of a more cultured generation and its now almost bygone era.