the man with the green, fleece beret

ever have one of those moments where you just keep asking yourself, “is this really happening?”

I had one of those today.

I had gone to the library to get some work done early this evening and decided to stop by the coffee shop connected to the library first (because I had a coupon for a free drink – um, hello – don’t have to ask me twice).  I order a decaf soy hazelnut latte.  and a voice behind me asks if I had just ordered soy in my drink.  totally confused, I turn around and there is this man (probably in his 50’s at least), wearing amazingly short shorts (yes, sadly, shorter than I would ever wear – I kid you not), a white shirt (or so I thought – I’ll get back to that), a jacket, black ray ban sunglasses (yes, we were inside…yet he was wearing them) and a green, fleece beret.

ok back to ordering the latte.  so he starts asking all these questions about soy – he didn’t know you could put soy in coffee drinks.  he wondered what the benefits were to it.  he wondered why I chose soy.  to which I told him I was allergic to dairy.  to which he threw up his hands and apologized for asking.

then he noticed that the back of my shirt said “Marathon, Florida” and he asked if I was from there and said he used to live in Jacksonville.  he was so excited to hear I was from Marathon – for a split second I felt like a celebrity.

then my drink was ready and I go to leave and he asks if I had a minute, that he would love to hear about the Keys if I had time.  I figured God had put this guy in my path for some reason so I sat down.

about 1/2 way thru the conversation, he takes his jacket off to reveal he wasn’t wearing a white t-shirt – no, he was wearing a stretched out wife beater.  so suddenly the already awkward situation turned even awkwarder (that’s not a word but it should be),

so there I sit across the small table from this man wearing illegally short shorts, a stretched out wife beater, ray bans, and a green fleece beret.  he kept his sunglasses on most of the time and would talk to me while looking over the top of his glasses.  it was very interesting. and confusing all at the same time.

we talked about a lot of random things.  he ended up pulling out his laptop because he wanted to look up pictures of Marathon, FL.  one of the pictures that came up was the Dolphin Research Center, which is right by my house.  I shared my fun bit of info that the original Flipper dolphin was buried under the dolphin statue in the picture.  he was totally stoked.  we talked about Key West.  a lot.  I had to keep reminding him I didn’t live in Key West.  but if you’re not from the Keys, it’s hard to understand that the “Keys” consist of more than just Key West.  :)

the whole time we were talking, I was silently asking God to allow the conversation to move toward Him.  I assumed this unexpected coffee chat was happening for a reason.

God is always faithful.  :)

sure enough, God allowed the conversation to be steered toward the “spiritual” side of things.  this guy is an agnostic, so he doesn’t really know what he thinks about God.  it was cool to get to converse with him about the Bible and Jesus and whether Jesus was who He said He was.

an hour later (yes…an hour…), I finally told him I had to go so I could get some of my work done.  I left him googling Lee Strobel and his book, The Case for Christ.  :)  as I left, I prayed he would really read it like he said he might.

did I mention he asked if he could take me out for dinner some time and play trivia? (he loves trivia – he was googling the Berean church and quizzing me – to which I unfortunately let him down many times because I didn’t know the answers to the random questions)  yeah – hmm…I just kind of giggled and quickly changed the subject.

and so me and the man with the green, fleece beret parted ways.