Excuse me sir, but what is the address of the box you live in?

My first thought, as an overly tall man stumbled into the parlor, was that he was either drunk or extremely confused. His eyes darted shiftily from the left and to the right, (making sure that no other customers were waiting to pounce on him, I can only presume) before he approached the register to place his order.

Unfortunately, his order was hardly what I call, well, an "order".

He spotted the waffle cones sitting in their holder on the counter. "I will have....a cone," he whispered.

I leaned in to hear him better. "A waffle cone you mean?" I asked.

"Yes," he confirmed, "how much is that?" He was still speaking in a tiny voice. His white hair whisped down his forehead as he jerked his chin downward, losing eye contact with me.

"The waffle cone is $1.10 extra," I said.

"Okay," he whispered, and pulled out a tattered looking wallet from his shorts. He handed me a loonie and a dime.

"I'm sorry, sir, but the waffle cone is $1.10 plus whatever size ice cream you're having" I clarified. What size will you have?"

His face showed fear. "What? Just a waffle cone, please."

"You mean you'd like to buy only the waffle cone, no ice cream in it?" I asked.

"No, I want ice cream please," he said.

"Well, what size would you like?" I asked again.

"I don't know," he fretted, "whatever is regular?"

I duly noted to myself that speaking with conviction is not a skill that this man posessed. By now, several other customers stood behind him in the line.

"Small, then," I confirmed, "what flavour?"

"What flavours do you have?" he asked.

I looked at him, from overtop a freezer with 13 ice creams in its midst, surrounded with other freezers holding the other 51. "All that you see here, sir," I replied. "We also have soft serve chocolate and vanilla."

At the word, "vanilla", his ears poked up. "I'll have that," he begged.

Usually, I would have confirmed that he wanted a small vanilla soft serve in a waffle cone, but I didn't feel the need to trouble the poor man further.

What I can take away from this experience is that some people in life know what they want, and it works out quite well for them. They get the flavour that they asked for in the cone of their choosing, and they leave the store quite happily. Others, however, have no idea what direction is of their preference.

The man left the store looking slightly dazed, but neverthless, he was holding his cone and looked happier than when he came in.

So I guess those people are okay too.