The Tale of a Dormouse

For many years, whenever I would stop off at the localStarbucks, I could count on seeing Dormouse squirreled away at one of thetables in the rear of the coffee shop, tapping away on her laptop as she sippedher Frappuccino. Her name wasn't Dormouse, of course. But as she slid her strawthrough her rodent-like buck teeth and torpidly dragged her fingers across herkeyboard, pausing to stare up with her beady eyes and bushy coiffure, shestruck me not as the middle-aged woman who had introduced...