Wheelchair Winnie and the Super-Scooter of Doom

Old people. They just crack me up. They're all like Ed Asner in the first 40 minutes of "UP" - cranky, cantankerous and all-too-unhappy. Why can't they sit around taking Viagra and smoking a hookah or something? By the way, we'll cover hookah pipes on an upcoming episode of Starbucks Drama. Stay tuned!

Anyway.

I'm chilling with a co-worker at (where else?) Starbucks on Friday and we're visited by an old woman on a Rascal scooter. These things are nifty - they have the absolute best marketing campaign on the planet - even if they don't seem to be all that revolutionary. And the old people driving these scooters are hell on wheels - literally.

I'm going to call her Wheelchair Winnie. Mostly because I like alliteration.

Wheelchair Winnie roars through the door at a good clip. She doesn't have anyone open it for her or push it open with her hand ahead of her - she simply slams into it with the scooter and crunches it open. I'm about 15 feet away and I can hear the CRACK! as she slams the scooter forward. Old people. Absolutely no sense of proportion, decency or proportion.

Wheelchair Winnie is gonna get up in here and have her cup of coffee if it kills her, the door or anyone who happens to be trying to exit the door. As it happens, a couple nurses from the nearby hospital were headed in the general direction - until they saw her - at which point they promptly exited the side door. Maybe they had her as a patient in the not-so-distant past ....

Wheelchair Winnie gets into the Starbucks. And once immediately past the door, she stops. And backs up to a point about two feet from the door. Maybe she's checking out the place for a PETA protest or something. Maybe she needs to re-aim her scooter of doom. Either way, she doesn't move for a while.  Which is a problem because she's in the path of foot traffic and an entrance/egress point of a busy coffee shop. Wheelchair Winnie do not care.

Enter an office secretary type swinging through on one of those late-afternoon "I want a Starbucks" runs. She has a list and a cell phone glued to her ear and isn't paying a bit of attention as she swans through the door wearing fashionable heels, a black mini-dress and enough bangles to make Susanna Hoffs file a trademark suit.

Or at least, she TRIES to enter. She hits the door with one manicure hand while yakking up a storm on the other. The door gives about two feet and slams into the back of Wheelchair Winnie's scooter, which she's still got parked in FRONT of the door browsing a rack of ugly coffee mugs.

The stylish secretary looks through the door and gives one of those "if looks could kill" glares, at which point Wheelchair Winnie cranks up the scooter, BACKS IT UP, then hurtles forward for four feet and slams on the brakes again. The woman is a maniac.

She waits until the stylish secretary is actually in the Starbucks to play her second card. And she doesn't even say a word.

Wheelchair Winnie waits until the secretary gets in, then starts the scooter up AGAIN - and tries to race the woman to the counter to order. It is like a game - Handicap Death Race 2009.

I see the stylish secretary roll her eyes, sigh and finally give it up. She must deal with old people all the time.

After all this, Wheelchair Winnie gets a tall coffee - which is like $1.50 - and parks her scooter directly under the bar where baristas hand off drinks while she browses a rack of coffee beans. For a solid 30 minutes, people trying to get their drinks have to detour around her and this scooter, which she's constantly backing up, moving around and puttering back and forth.

I've got nothing on the handicapped - but this woman was just insane - and it honestly felt like she was trying to be as obtrusive as possible with her scooter. Some sort of "LOOK AT ME PEOPLE, LOOK AT ME."

Well, everybody looked at her all right - and gave her nasty looks - because she was clogging traffic like a broke-down taco truck in the middle of the freeway.