Dunkin’s Dinosaurs

In the early 1970’s, when I was a busy young man with tons of stuff to do and not enough time to do it, I would occasionally dash into Dunkin’s for a breakfast sandwich on my way to work. I was mostly focused on the day’s agenda, slightly on my sandwich, not at all on the surroundings. But there was always something undefinable that distracted me, an itch I couldn’t scratch, until one day it dawned on me. That group of about a half-dozen men sitting at a few pushed together tables were the same men at the same tables whenever I was there. How could that be? My morning breakfasts were infrequent and random, so the odds against pure coincidence were astronomical. There was only one plausible answer. The variable part of the equation was me. They were the constant.

Intrigued, I started making up stories about them. Members of the local VFW? Retired policemen or firefighters? I surreptitiously eavesdropped, looking for clues. There wasn’t much quiet time. The same two men would split about 90% of the talking, the others chipping in with four or five word comments. The vibe was never confrontational, often lively, and always convivial. I assumed one of the two talkers got there early to claim the territory, but couldn’t be sure. Just when my interest was starting to wane, the unexpected happened. My wife and I were on a road trip, stopped at a Dunkin’s in a different town, and there was the same configuration with different men.

I had pointed out the original group to my wife once, then again on the rare occasions we were at that Dunkin’s together, receiving a ho-hum, “Oh yeah, they’re here again.” But this encounter elicited a wide-eyed, silently-mouthed, “Wow!” The configuration was unmistakably, eerily similar. When we became empty-nesters and retired our road trips expanded in size, and these encounters increased until it was clearly, undeniably, “a thing.”

What kind of thing? Is it the evolution of the urban “unplanned stoop gathering?” Is it the predecessor of the “flash” events spawned by social media? Is it hopeful proof that we will always find a suitable way to gather in person and socialize? Or is it foreboding a time when, like the dinosaurs, the humans will no longer have anywhere to mingle?