Two weeks ago I was at a Starbucks drinking coffee, reading, and writing. This was a day for anything but Wattpad. I was trying hard to get through a book I had meant to finish a long time ago and I found being at Starbucks a bit annoying. Too many people and too damn loud. And the coffee! I am getting so damn tired of it tasting different every time someone different makes it. 

There were several groups of rambunctious high schoolers running around. Several other groups sitting at tables poking away at their laptops. Some doing homework, others on any number of various social media on their laptops or their smart phones (do they make dumb phones anymore?). Mostly Facebook, tumblr, Snapchat , Twitter, and others. All of them talking to people far away and ignoring the people right next to them. Or were they?

I noticed this young girl about 16 years old typing away at a laptop having a conversation with some boy. (And no you don't have to be Sherlock to know when a girl is talking to a boy). She typed, waited, smiled, typed, waited, smiled, and so on and so on. Blonde hair, braces,  blue eyes and shy. She had the look of a girl who could never talk to a guy in person. She was alone with her laptop, her latte, and that boy on the other end of the laptop. She seemed so excited.

There was a dozen other kids in the place. All of them tapping away at their phones or laptops. It was getting noisy so I decided to go.  I was about to leave when I saw this young boy sitting up against the wall on his phone on the other side of cafe from the girl. Something about him caught my eye.  

One of the tricks to detective work is to notice that odd wave in the ocean. When you are on shore every wave is looking at you. It's coming your direction and they all blend into each other. But then all of a sudden a wave goes sideways. It does it only for a split second because it runs into all the other waves and disappears into the ocean. But you see it. This young man went sideways. He was about 16, blonde, good looking, and plugging away in a rhythm that matched the girl with braces.  Sure this boy and girl could have been talking to anyone in the world. But they were the odd waves in this ocean that went a different direction. They were talking to each other. 

Of course I'm an ex-detective so I demand a little more than just my odd ocean wave theory. I caught a glimpse of the girls laptop and then swung around to the counter and caught enough glimpse of the phone to see they were on the same app. They were talking to each other. 

Ah young love.

I am no longer shocked as I used to be to see kids talking to each other who have no idea what each other really look like or who they are. This whole world of the internet is just shy of an alternate reality where nothing can really make sense, nor do many people care that it does. People just want people to talk to and many of them don't know how to do it for real anymore. 

I sat back in a chair and watched these 2 kids for another minute. Type, wait, smile, type...and so on. I toyed with the idea of giving away each other's identity. But who am I to get in the way of destiny? 

Don't worry. I didn't do anything. Never got the chance. While thinking about it the door to Starbucks swung open and a cute young cheerleader type walked in. The boy swiped away at his smart phone screen and put the phone in his pocket. The cute cheerleader type ran to the boy and sat down by him. They both smiled and kissed and she put her head on his shoulder.

The girl at the laptop was the only odd wave in the ocean now. She was stuck at type, wait.....