Monday, October 29, 2007

Conversational flotsam and jetsam

Passing people on the sidewalk, one tends to overhear snippets of conversation that make one (well this one, at any rate) wonder. I sometimes build up elaborate (and probably erroneous) scenarios in my head.

Young lady on a cell phone, walking immediately in front of me:

"Melissa honey, you are outta control. It'll be all right. Trust me. It'll...you know what? Come up here next weekend. There are 20,000 boys on this campus, I'm sure we can find one for you." Melissa must've either just lost a boyfriend, or is having rotten luck on the dating scene "back home."

She turns towards the dorms and is lost in the crowd.

Approaching me from the left is another young woman on another phone, voicing her opinion of someone's apartment:

"It's such a bachelor pad. He doesn't even have spoons! That's why he's always over at our place...." and away she goes. I'm wondering how he eats cereal--one mouthful at a time, straight from the box? Interspersed with swigs of milk right out of the carton, of course.

A man and a woman, both dressed like office professionals, are standing on the corner of the street that divides campus and town.

"You're about to watch me perpetrate fraud on my parents," the woman says, reaching for her cell phone. " I'm not proud of this, but sometimes you just have to do it, you know?"

I didn't stay to hear what sort of fraud this was. I'd like to think that it was because it's none of my business, but really it's more that the pedestrian crossing sign had just changed to "walk," and I had no reason to stay.

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