Hello!

I go to Dunkin Donuts before work and spend about a half hour drinking coffee and people watching. A lot of regulars.

One of them is a twentysomething Filipino girl who rides a bright pink Hello Kitty bike with a basket and huge handlebars. She has a Hello Kitty backpack and usually wears a Hello Kitty tank top. She rides her bike with hard plastic high heels on.

I thought maybe she was a graphic designer, or maybe she just traveled down a Hello Kitty rainbow to the Dunkin Donuts on Ohio and St. Clair for coffee. Either way I thought it was cool that she had taken her love of the constantly content kitty to the extreme. This is what she liked and she was going to live in this Hello Kitty world, whether anyone liked it or not.

One morning, I arrived and she was asleep. She was taking up three tables laying down. Taking a closer look I realized she looked CRAZY. Her plastic high heels were totaly scuffed and shredding on the heels from her bike riding. She looked like she didnt have anywhere else to go. She had Hello Kitty pencil with a Hello Kitty pencil topper between her small breasts.

Had she spent all of her money on Hello Kitty merchandise, thinking it would take her to another happy, cheery, perfect, japanese cartoon, Hello! world?

I felt like she was trying to escape something really bad. I can relate to this. Trying to buy yourself in to another prettier fictional world.