"I need sleep, Frank," came the words of greeting across the counter, to fill the lull preceding delivery of my usual coffee. When I asked her why, she said (unsurprisingly) it's because she'd not slept. She'd had less than six hours of sleep over the past couple of days, catching up with old friends home for the holiday week.

I looked for evidence of a lack of rest, but she looked fresh enough to bounce right into that Playboy modeling shoot she keeps talking about. I told her this (not in so many words), and got in return the charmingest dimpled-up smile as she handed across my coffee. Another excellent morning.

Having previously decided to forego the joys of my cubicle that morning, I settled in to work at the coffeeshop instead, at a corner table within earshot of the counter. I became lost in the work pretty quickly, reassured by the regular rhythms of the place. I noticed the place was filling up with a number of forty-and-over males, typical of a holiday week's morning. Most of them, as they came in, got the story of the lady's sleepless nights along with their coffee, and most of them expressed some kind of sympathy.

Just the usual calming routine... until the mistake.

She was telling the story again, to another of us gentlemen - not one of the more regular customers, though it was apparent that he and she went to the same church. I wish I could reconstruct precisely how the mistake happened, but I honestly didn't tune in until toward the end of this exchange...

"Wow, I'm tired, I'm glad I only have to run the shop for another couple of hours before I can go get a nap."
"I imagine you'll be glad to leave work today."
"Oh yeah. You can imagine me in bed."

OK, perfectly innocent mistake, could happen to anybody. But nobody was ready for it, particularly since it didn't even register on her what she'd said. There is no description for the way in which every motion stopped in that room. It was as if an entire mime troupe had decided to peek over the walls of their boxes at once.

There were about four minutes of low comedy after that, as she realized what she'd said that had messed up the whole room at once, made attempts to explain and fix it, etc. I really can't do that part of the story justice...

Only thing I know for sure is that nothing else useful got written that morning, but the reason why was absolutely brilliant enough to write down.