I’ve listened to two exchanges recently that stick in my mind.
Today at the grocery store:
Woman with loud voice to her little girl: “Do you have to pee?”
Little girl with soft voice: “No.”
WWLV: “Then why are are you grabbing your vagina?!”
Not exactly anatomically correct and pretty much something someone at my age doesn’t expect to hear.
The other was on our recent trip to the Southwest. We were visiting the Zuni Red Willow tribe pueblo, and our guide was a young Zuni man. As the tour went on, it was apparent that one older woman was the sort that you really try to avoid in your day-to-day life: loud, obnoxious and with a clearly Texan accent. The capper was at the end of the tour when the proud young man wrapped things up by recounting how their sacred lake was returned to the Red Willow tribe by Richard Nixon.
Obnoxious Old Woman: “So what are you exactly?”
Guide, looking a bit confused: “I’m a member of the Red Willow tribe.”
OOW: “So are you Indian or Native American or what?”
Guide: “No, I’m Red Willow tribe.”
OOW: “But what’s your heritage: Mexican or Spaniard or something?”
Guide: “We are the Zuni people of the Red Willow tribe.”
This one goes back several years, but it’s still one of my favorites. Co-worker in the next cube is on the phone with his wife. They have two dogs, one is having health issues and is at the animal hospital for several days. Wife called because the other dog is having some kind of separation anxiety. Co-worker is talking to his wife for a while, then I hear him say “Put her on.” At which point he starts talking to the dog, and telling her everything will be fine and to pray for the other dog. I just about lost it and had to get up and walk away before I burst out laughing.
I stepped out of my car in a strip mall parking lot about a dozen years ago and heard indistinct yelling and a revving engine and chirping tires and looked up to see a car carelessly racing through the lot with the passenger, a teenage girl, screaming and hitting the driver, a teenage boy.
I stepped back to put parked cars between me and the car and it came screeching to a stop nearby. The drivers door swung open and the driver ripped his shirt trying to escape the passenger’s attack. He rolled out the door, landing on his shoulder and clawing his way to his feet while she climbed over the center console after him. She was fast and he narrowly made it away and he sprinted away with a bloody nose and she yelled “BUT HOW ARE WE GOING TO -PAY- FOR AN ABORTION?!”
The boy didn’t even look back, the girl got in the drivers seat and sideswiped a nearby parked car on her way out of the lot where she made a left turn over a landscaped median, disabling the car and blocking both lanes of traffic on the other side. I went inside, picked up my takeout dinner, and offered a statement on my way out. There was no shortage of police officers or wide-eyed gaping-mouthed witnesses so whomever I spoke with thanked me for the offer and shoo’d me away.
About 20 years ago, standing behind two female college students. One, who was black and an aspiring actress, was telling the other that she was planning to travel to California to hang out at a nightclub frequented by Robert DeNiro who, in her words, has “a serious case of Jungle Fever.” Apparently she had it on good authority that she was DeNiro’s “type” and would thus be destined for instant stardom once he noticed her and she would willingly provide what would obviously be expected from her in return. Sure enough, I was flipping through a copy of some gossip mag while waiting for a haircut the next day and there was a photo of DeNiro with a black woman, who resembled the girl I had overheard, on his arm.
Years ago, on one of my first trips to Paris, I was having breakfast in the hotel’s restaurant. Nearby was a table of about eight people, apparently a family from Texas. The father was a stereotypical Texan, dressed in total Texas drag (including spurs), loud, boisterous, overweight, red-faced, with a collar several sizes too small. He was monopolizing the conversation during the entire meal, bossing the other family members around. At one point he needed the services of the waiter, so he pounded on the table with his fist, bellowing “PARLAY-VOO, BOY, PARLAY VOO!!!” It was at that point that I began telling people I was Canadian.
In the supermarket when I arrive at the checkout to hear:
“Sir, this is 12 items or less.”
Guy in front: “I only have one thing!”
I lean over slightly to look and there on the checkout are 24 tubes of toothpaste!
The checkout operator looked at me standing in line, I just smiled and shrugged and I could see her just give a mental “Fuck it”. Rather than argue, she ran the items and got the guy out of there ASAP.
It does seem like that would go pretty fast, if the clerk is smart enough to enter '24 X…" before scanning one of the tubes (assuming all 24 tubes were the same).
This also happened on a trip to Paris. It was 1983 and I was in the Navy, deployed to Sigonella, Sicily. I took leave for a week and went to Paris, and among other things, I bought a ticket to see a ballet, because I’d never been to a professional ballet performance before. The man sitting next to me was somewhat annoying during the performance, uttering “Manifique!” and “Incroyable!” and similar declarations.
Then it was intermission, and I heard him turn to his companion and start talking in the twangiest Texas accent you can imagine. It took everything I had not to start laughing right then and there.
My absolute favorite was overheard years ago by a guy on a pay phone: I bought a gun by myself, I got a tattoo by myself, I can certainly go to the movies by myself.
I overheard this in a convenience store in West Virginia in 2011 and was so charmed by it I made a note of it in my phone: “He was my cousin. I married his uncle so I became his aunt.”
“Yeah mate, listen, I can get you on the Strategy Group. You’ll be on about £60K/year. But listen, mate, you won’t have to work. Your job will be to get me fit. We’ll hit the gym four times a week, yeah? We’ll say you’re on the Strategy Group. £60K”
“…”
“Yeah, mate, listen, you’re not worth £80K. You’ll be getting me fit. £60K.”
He walked into the office of a major commercial bank, and I walked on, trying to decide which of this pair had the greater chutzpah: the speaker, for trying to get his bank to hire his personal trainer for £60K, or the trainer for demanding £80K to shuffle paper and hit the gym four days a week.
Back in the 90s, I was privy to one side of a phone conversation at a government building. The guy was obviously talking to a civil service employee, and it went something like:
Yeah, hi Ms. Brown, this is Jim Jones and I was in there earlier today and I’d like to. . .yeah, I know we got off on the wrong foot and I’d like to apologize for calling you a. . .yes, I realize that I was rude and vulgar, but I’m hoping we can let that go and start over. . .well, I don’t see why you won’t accept my apol. . .well, you’re being kinda rude yourself. . .yeah, well I take back my apology. . .OKAY, WELL JUST FUCK YOU, YOU FUCKING BITCH!! NO, FUCK YOU!!! ::slams down phone::
Spurs? Seriously? In my 55 years on this planet, most of them in Texas-- and I have cousins who barrel ride-- NEVER have I seen spurs worn inside. And I could refer you to a passel of aunts who would have taken a broom to any cousin who even thought of wearing spurs in the house.
I was on a bus tour of Spain, where I was the only American, most of the other people on the tour were from South America. The tour guide spoke English, and I had taken several years of Spanish in school, so I was able to get by with what I knew. But we were staying in Seville, and they came up short of the number of rooms that we were supposed to stay in in a hotel, so they put me up in another hotel, very very ritzy. I was at breakfast, in their big, bright, white-table clothed restaurant, and there was a big group of Americans with Southern accents talking really loudly. Finally they all got up to leave, and all of them went off in one direction, except for one woman who went the other direction. Her friends yelled across the whole room, “We’re leaving now.” And the lone woman yelled, “I’ll catch up with you, I have to go pee.”
