Home again, as it were

Back in this same cafe in Seattle near Mark's from whence I posted two years ago. The croissants are so damned good.

Not surprisingly, I return to the same theme, or a variant thereupon. There was a woman about my age, OK, probably younger, who was in here with her young girl (that's how I know she was younger). She started talking to a woman standing next to her about how she was from Ann Arbor and moved here a few years ago and how much Seattle was like Ann Arbor, blah blah blah.

I resisted the temptation to jump in and say: "My wife went to school there and her dad is from there and I really want to visit and get a sandwich from Zingerman's blah blah blah." Because the game she was playing and that we play all the time is "I am from the same tribe you are and we are educated and affluent and isn't that nice?" And that's all there is to it. We are from the same tribe. It is good sales technique.

And look where that has got us.