When I was a little girl, listening to other people’s phone conversations was considered one of the rudest things you could possibly do. Flash forward to today’s world, and most of the time listening to other people’s cell phone conversations is one of the most boring things you can do. Most of the time, anyway.
So I’m having eggs, pancakes and coffee at the local Mickey D’s, and I over heard a woman say “Yeah, I just got out of jail.” My ears perk up and I hear the following:
Yeah, but it was a bum rap. I wasn’t stalking him. (Pause)
No, I wasn’t. The judge said I couldn’t contact him. I didn’t. (Pause)
Sending my kids over to his place to talk to him is not contacting him (Pause)
Well, it wasn’t. I-did-not-have-any-contact-with-him. (Pause)
Listen, it’s all because of that bitch he’s living with. She convinced the judge to put me in jail for nothing. I didn’t do nothing. (Pause)
Well, they said I can’t contact him. They didn’t say anything about contacting her (Pause).
Look, once he sees how nice my kids are and what that bitch did, he’ll dump her, get her put in prison, and come live with me and my kids. (Pause)
Yes-he-will. She set me up, and I intend to get him back and put her in jail. Or send someone to take care of them both (Pause).
Well, some friend you turned out to be.
The talking stops, and I then realize the whole place is silent, listening to her.
Hi Annie. Just looked at the stats on this post - 336 reads, one (til now) reply. Says it all really - fascinating read, but you’re left not knowing what to say (or even what to think) about her. What I always say at times like this: other people’s lives.
(There is a silent disapproving Tcho! and a shaking of the head that goes with that).
You’re saying she was talking loud enough that every one in a busy McD’s was hearing her? That’s crazy. Do people have no shame any more. Last I heard, going to jail was a bad thing.
True, but this lady feels absolutely justified in what she is saying, and fully expects that anybody overhearing her will be cheering her on. She is completely clueless as to why her “friend” is not supporting her.
Uh. It reminds me of a stunt a friend and I used to do when we were in High School. We called it the Elevator Game.
Whenever we got on an elevator and there was some stranger in the car, we would continue to talk animatedly to each other, totally ignoring the other people present, while telling each other weird or outlandish stories of what we or people we knew had done.
Like how my aunt had fifteen cats even though her apartment forbade pets, but she’d gotten away with it for years because she was fanatical about cleaning the litter boxes five times a day and always had incense burning, but now she’d adopted this poor little Chihuahua that had belonged to a friend who’d had to go into the mental hospital but all the cats were bullying it and she had to keep playing her television really loud ALL the time to cover the noise of the cats snarling at it and how sad she was that the dog was getting so terribly scratched up, but what could she do?
Or how her new boyfriend had a job as a car radio spotter for a gang. He’d go to malls and shopping centers and work his way up and down the rows of cars, peering in the window, looking for particular brands of car stereos. And when he found them he’d spray an ‘R’ on the back right tire, just a few inches above the ground, and then the ‘extractors’ would come along and be able to hit car after car, zip, zip, zip and then be gone, without having to waste time finding the good ones. But the mall cops had seen him with the spray can and they were having trouble with graffiti and so they’d questioned him and when he wouldn’t say why he was walking around with a nearly empty can of spray paint they’d called the police and…
Junk like that. Just piling on stupidity or strange decisions or whatever, one thing after another, trying to make it as outlandish as possible but just not completely unbelievable. The point being just to see if we could get the fellow riders to seem like they believed us.
No cell phones in those days, but I’d bet we’d have used them that way if we’d had them.
My kids used to pretend to be arguing and fighting in the aisles of stores. They thought it was really fun to fake people out. I generally acted like I didn’t know them while they were acting this game out. They were crazy preteens.
