And you, my friend, are in business

I swung by Ann Arbor's Pita Pit today on my way home from school to pick up some dinner. Good place. Today it was pretty empty. I think maybe there was one other customer there. There was only one guy behind the counter. This was around 4:20. I ordered two falafel pita wraps - one with the works, with feta cheese but minus bell and jalapeno peppers, and one with the works, with swiss cheese.

The counter guy was a remarkably friendly young man. "Glad to be back?" he asked me. He must have noticed the bulging black bag slung around my shoulder.

"Mixed feelings. You?" He looked like a student. He had student-length stubble.

"I'm not actually a student..." he said. "As a matter of fact, I own this place."

"Oh yeah? My fiance and I love this place..."

"It means a lot to hear that. I opened this place up about a year ago. A year ago in May. A few years ago it was owned by another guy but it closed down."

He folded over the lip of the pita and self-adhered it with delicious tzatziki sause. The pita was stuffed so much that it bulged and split a little on the sides. I didn't mind. I appreciated his generosity.

I tried to make more conversation. "So, is this place a chain?"

"...Yeah, it's a franchise." I felt like I had used the C word.

He finished up the wraps and handed them to me without a bag. "And you, my friend, are in business." He smiled. I thanked him and left. Inexplicably, I felt somewhat suspicious that he told me I was in business. But the pitas, as usual, we delicious.

The Ann Arbor Pita Pit is one of our favorite restaurants. It's on State Street, south of Washington street. Think of it like a healthy Subway for pita sandwiches - loads of fixings, and you choose them. They make them right in front of you. I heartily recommend the falafel pita.

The ride home on the AATA was a lot less pleasant. I overheard a somewhat educated guy sermonizing to a less educated guy. Both a little younger than me, by the looks of it. Or maybe a lot. It's true that a little knowledge (and not enough) makes a person really dangerous.

The educated guy was rambling on offensively about all sorts of topics, but one point stoked my ire the most. I'll summarize his comments here.

"To be gay is a moral outrage. It has nothing to do with religion or politics. What kind of potion does a man have to drink to think that a man with a woman is not beautiful? The gays say they can't help it - that they're born like that. But even though they're born gay, they need not carry out the sex act. It's not like their gay lover is going to explode if they don't have sex with them. They lie to society effectively because first they lie to themselves to the extent that they believe it, and then they can convince others that it's not evil. Gay sex is evil, plain and simple."

I was surprised at the educated guy's grasp of the world. He cited the fact that some primates like bonobos exhibit homosexual behavior -- which is true. He also had a very good and correct grasp of Darwinian evolution. He was well-spoken, knowledgable, articulate, and confident. He had the kind of rare articulation where I would sometimes - involuntarily - find myself agreeing with parts of his trains of thought. That is, until his idiotic, bigoted conclusions. But that man had a gift. I could see the other, less-educated guy nodding... letting it sink in. It was getting through to him, like some sort of revelatory brainseed, to be grown and propagated to other impressionable, fertile minds.

I wanted to wring the educated guy's neck and scream, "What the hell are you doing?"

But I got off the bus instead. My stop had come.

But it's just as well. After all, who am I to tell him what he should regard as right or wrong?