easy, like a sunday morning.

I woke yesterday with vigor, determined and hopeful about the day's possibilities.

It started with the sunrise. The window in my bedroom, that’s three times the size of my last, faces the sky where the sun marks the day’s beginning. The light woke me before six, the slightest look of ambition slid across my face, quickly disappeared, and I went back to sleep, waking four hours later. I wiped some make-up across my face, put on the only clean tank-top amidst my belongings, and prepared a delightful bowl of cereal to accompany the news paper, back patio, and the sound of my relative’s water fountain.

I let this moment of comfort ease me into my mid-day adventure into the unknown, also known as the “Adams Morgan” part of town. DC isn’t unlike the others. It’s sectioned, and this trendy section happens to be about a twenty minute walk from my house. At night the street lights up with bars and happy hours, hookah, wine, and the like. On a Sunday mid-morning, there are places to get coffee and decent cheap-ish diner breakfast. This was part of my plan.

The other part was to make a friend. This seems easier than it is, especially for someone like me, meaning, someone willing to strike up conversation with a stranger. But it’s quite difficult, actually. The first one especially. Once you’ve met that person you sort of click with that knows other people you could meet too, a world of friend possibilities is way open. My ill conceived plan today was to go public places where I may be in the midst of like minded people, and, at the very least, talk to someone I don’t know.

One of the trendy I-look-cool-but-don’t-have-very-good-coffee-so-I-serve-animal-crackers-with-your-americano-so-you-get-distracted-by-your-mediocre-product establishments I visited first was crowded, but mostly just that. There was a guy sitting next to me for a bit, but I decided his body language wasn’t very inviting. It may have been the insecurity biting at my heels that decided that, but regardless, I failed to say anything other than a sentence that resembled something very close to the following: “sure, I will slap their wrists if they attempt to take away your coffee while you use the restroom.” A pregnant woman and her very attentive husband replaced young-reading-I-PAD guy, and they simply managed to crowd my space, and hence forth, annoy me enough to exit, and try again somewhere new.

Establishment number two was down a few doors, and a place I had read reviews of before entering. It’s called “The Diner” and it doesn’t attempt to be anything other than that. I took my place at the bar, ordered a mimosa and salmon eggs benedict, opened my book, and looked at the empty seat to my left. I don’t understand why, on a day when I am sincerely attempting awkward conversation with perfect strangers, that crazy must take a seat next to me.

My psychologist friend may have qualms with my description, but folks, that’s the only word I know to explain my bar-mate. Socially inept? Not just. Rude? Yes, but also, so much more. “Excuse me,” she says, as she takes her seat, glaring at my belongings as if they were in her way when really, I promise, they weren’t in her way. I nudge them over nonetheless, and hope for the best. The kind man behind the bar that must have to put up with drunken adolescent twenty-somethings all of the time, as this place is open twenty-four hours, hands her a menu and asks if he can get her a drink. “Water,” she says coldly. He comes back a few minutes later to get her order, and she lets him know she isn’t ready. When he returns again, she orders the veggie burger, and then, literally, orders him to bring her jalapenos as well. After she orders she leaves with her purse, I assume, to wash her hands. It’s an assumption because, a few minutes after she returns, she informs me with vigor that she is, “a clean freak. I mean, I am freaky clean. I am the biggest clean freak you’ll ever meet.” She tells me this after she yells at the bar tender to clean up the space to her left, where the previous guests had eaten, “before you bring out my food. I mean it. That counter better be clean before you expect me to eat my meal.”

“That’s bull shit,” she says, turning to me.

Oh geeze.

“I mean it. That pisses me off. I mean, it makes me really angry that I have to tell them to clean off the counter, you know what I mean? That’s just ridiculous...I shouldn't have to teeeell them to clean the counter,” as she throws her arms up in the air, and I begin to get red and hot-like with anger. “I didn’t mean to put that on yo-”...I interrupt her.

“That’s good,” I say, “because I work in the service industry and I know what it’s like to deal with difficult people all day, while scrambling for moments to get everything clea-”...she interrupts up me...”Well then, I will just draw a line on that,” as she motions an imaginary line between the two of us. “I would appreciate that,” I said, putting an end to further interaction. A buss boy delivers her food, gets her the mayonnaise she demands, and a few minutes later, the bar tender swings by to see how everything is. “I don’t know because I haven’t tried it yet,” crazy snaps back.

And that was the culmination of my make-a-friend-today goal.