I walk with my head down. I find a lot of change. I walked into the chain coffee shop head down, so I missed the kid at first. "Kid" didn't really get it because he was maybe 25, but I'm 56, so "kid" it was.

The guy with him, a blubbery guy in jeans and oversized black shirt was calling the kid "baby" and paying for his coffee. Blubbery looked to be about 40.

The kid had on white sneakers, Nikes, baggy blue jean shorts below the knee and a long-sleeved blue shirt.

The kid was high, heroin high or maybe Oxycontin, eyes half-masted, words coming out of his mouth slow, like a lover's whisper to the whole world.

The coffee shop is in an urban plaza with a discount cigarette store, a bar, a diner, a takeout Chinese place, a used clothing store run by an evangelical church, an appliance store and an Army recruiting office.

And the kid had ordered a huge iced coffee with whipped cream and a drizzle of caramel on top.

"Can I have some moooore whipped cream?" he slushed at the clerk, who despite clear misgivings, squirted additional whipped cream onto the top of an iced coffee that already resembled an ice cream sundae. She added some more caramel

It's a great country, America. You can have as much of anything as you'd like, if you're willing to pay.

"That's enough, baby," said Blubbery Older Guy, who paid with a $20 bill.

And the kid's tongue went into the whipped cream sloppily, like a dog eating a scoop of ice cream from your hand. When I was a kid, maybe 9 years old, I had a big boxer dog who would eat ice cream from my hand.

The kid and Blubber left, the kid staggering just a little as he went out the door. Blubber steadied him with a hand under the armpit. I got a small black, no sugar and a coffee roll with maple-flavored frosting.

The kid's coffee was out in the parking lot, the clear plastic container on its side, ice melting, a big, already runny glob of whipped cream flung out on the asphalt.

I continued on to work, needing to earn money to replace the nearly $5 I'd spent on the coffee and the roll.

And the kid and Blubber went where?

Doesn't make a difference, I guess.

It's a big world, and everyone is going somewhere, melting their lives like ice cubes, being someone's baby, being poor, being addicted, annoying the $8 an hour clerk in a coffee shop just across from a used clothing store run by an evangelical church.

The reason I remembered this scene was because, later in the week, I figured out that I was in the coffee shop with Blubber and the kid just as a rodeo clown in Missouri came out wearing an Obama mask. Which got all the press that week. Blubber and the kid didn't make the news.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.