"You've heard it said that you can't please everyone," I said. Well, I'm here to tell you that you can't please anyone but yourself if that."
"He's practicing for the little speech he's giving later today," said Lupe in response to the question.
"Oh," said the woman and sat down at the table apparently deciding that I was no real threat.
Now you're probably wondering what's going to happen next because you know as well as I that this Lupe, mature beyond her years full to the brim with particle physics and differential equations, is about as stable as a hot quark.
And you'd be right to wonder. With a manner that's usually reserved for BFFs, she leaned over to the woman and said, "You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody."
The woman, let's call her Solveigh because she had the look of someone who regularly spends weeks without seeing the sun.
"Excuse me?" said Solveigh.
"Maya Angelou," said Lupe.
Solveigh turned her eyes to mine as though asking for assistance.
"Sorry," I said. "I'm a stranger here myself."
Solveigh turned to look at Lupe again. Now I was confused. I would think that once would be enough but apparently she's one of the devotees of Rumi and willing to give everyone the benefit of the doubt.
"If you look to others for validation, then you already have one foot on the banana skin," said Lupe and I'm sure she meant it to be an explanation.
Solveigh stood, picked up her latte, and headed for the door. Lupe watched her walk away.
"Too bad," I said. "I sensed that she has an interesting story to tell."
Lupe didn't reply.
"Don't you agree?" I asked.
"Well," said the godneice in a deeply thoughtful way, "you know what they say. You can measure the location or the momentum, but you can't measure both."
"Is this about quantum physics?" I asked.
"Isn't everything?" she said.
"Very true," I said. "Life comes hard and fast, especially when you're not paying attention."