Usually I really have to reach in order to find some love for my fellow coffeshop patrons. The guy who sits facing me and dares to eat a muffin! The people who are having a meeting! The girl coughing! But tonight I got a treat, someone who could charm even my grinchlike heart:

Very small but sturdy kid with a baby-bird mouth and monchichi hair, sitting across from a tall older guy with a long thick gray ponytail: “Do you like your tea Grandpa? Ask me if I like my hot chocolate. I like my hot chocolate!”

He had hung his new-looking, blue-flamed baseball cap on the back of his chair, and when they got up to leave, he put it on and bounced out behind his grandpa, strutting to the beat of the ironic faux-country music the hipsters sometimes like to play in here.