I drove to the downtown library yesterday afternoon to see a hoard of people standing on the front steps. I didn’t know that the library didn’t open until 1pm on Sundays.  I sipped my polar pop and lounged in the grass, until the doors opened and the library sucked in its adoring public. From afar, it was a romantic notion — the handful of eager minds that could not wait to scour the bookshelves for things unknown to them, flip through yellowed pages smelling of dust and time.

Up close, I learned that most of them were homeless people looking to use the free internet.

But let’s not name names. I was there for the same reason, which resulted in me sitting among some delightfully crazy people on floor five.

“Excuse me, what color is your hair?” the woman to the right of me asked.

“My natural color? Or…well, I get this done professionally,” I responded, feeling somewhat guilty that I paid for something so superficial while this woman had most of her worldly possessions in a Kroger plastic bag.

“Well, it’s very lovely.”

I thanked her, babbling on about color depositing shampoos, like my life was such a struggle, but I am chatty and will talk to pretty much anyone and she didn’t judge me for it.

“A good hair color is hard to find,” she declared.

“Oh, yes. Yes it is…” I trailed off, assuming the end of this superficial conversation.

“Much like a good man - hard to find.”

“I know..right?”

She took a beat, and although we both went back to looking at our monitors, I knew there was more coming.

“But you can get rid of your hair color. You can’t kill a man.”

I laughed nervously and waited for the crazy.

“…well, you can. But you catch hell for it.”

I peeked at her monitor - she was googling Miami crime records.