One of the perks of riding public transit is hearing odd conversations, or half of a conversation that just sounds odd.
Yesterday, the guy behind us was on the phone. His half of the conversation:
“Well, it’s not nice to interrupt someone’s life streams.” (pause) “Hey, they let you stay there; they’re good bros.” (pause) “Yeah, it’s weird about the restraining order, but they’re stand-up bros.” (pause) “Hey, gotta go, man.”
I have no idea what that first bit of hipster speak is supposed to mean.
This wasn’t as amusing as the conversation I heard between two skater boys who were arguing about teleportation. The one kept insisting to the other that “You don’t understand what teleportation is, man! What you’re talking about is instant matter transfer, dude, not teleportation! They’re completely different!”
I suspect some sort of substance ingestion in the latter.
It would almost be worthwhile to just ride the local public transit, writing down the things I hear for a blog.
Luckily for me, people rarely talk on the DC Metro. But once I did hear a girl talking about the time a boy came over to her house and said something. And she went outside and asked “huh?” Yep, right outside and asked “huh?” I most have heard the fact that she went outside and asked “huh?” at least 25 times.
I thought about that, although my wife also heard “life streams”. It was the accent on the word “life”, I guess. If you say both out loud, it seems like one says them differently.
Kelevra: Dude, that’s exactly what the two skaters sounded like. After this scintillating conversation, one of them got into a confrontation with another passenger, telling him something like “You wanna go with me, you’re gonna have a real bad day, dude.” :rolleyes:
I walked up to a group of guys at work right after I was assigned to that area. The conversation from a tall guy speaking Sopranos English:
“OK, We grab her gently and hold her down using pillows so we leave no marks. Give her a hypodermic under the uvula, they never check there during autopsies. Just air. She dies from a brain embolism. I dig a 16’ deep pit using my Extend-a-hoe. I slope it out, drive down and dig another 16 feet. we bury her there and dump a huge boulder on top and back fill it. They’ll never find her.”
We eventually came to be good friends but I never messed with him. Well, not too much. I remember that one time he grabbed me at my biceps and slid me up the wall a few feet. The conversation started, “Now listen, cunt…”
To fit in with the “most cliched life” thread, Dom was Italian, worked in construction and grew up knowing Danny Greene and all his buddies. To help someone out of a difficult situation he was fond of saying things like, “Do you want them to feel it, or just go quickly”?
There was a guy who sat in an adjacent cubicle at work, and he had kind of a loud voice, so it was often impossible not to overhear. His wife usually called him a couple times a day. One day she called because dog #1 was at the animal hospital for a couple of days and dog #2 was not adjusting well to being alone. At one point in the conversation I heard him say “Put her on.” He then proceeded to talk to dog #2 over the phone, explaining why dog #1 was away, telling her everything was going to be OK, then finished up with “Say a prayer for her.”
It was all I could do to keep from busting out laughing.
I once listened to my brother’s brother-in-law carry on an entire Shelley Berman routine on the phone with his young daughter. I was laughing so hard, I had tears rolling down my face.
“Honey, is mommy home?”
“Sweetie, are you nodding your head?”
“Are you still nodding your head? Can you say yes or no for me?”
“No, just say yes or say no. Is mommy home?”
“Okay, can you. . .hello? Hello?”
That was many years ago, but still makes me laugh.
Several years ago I was riding MAX in Portland with my grandfather. Grandpa speaks 6 languages fluently and knows a few phrases in several more languages.
Anyway, we were heading across town in the middle of the day, so the train car wasn’t particularly full. At one stop three men in black suits climbed aboard and began to speak quietly but quite intensely in some foreign language I didn’t recognize. My grandfather let our conversation end and he sat there listening to these three men talk for the next 20 minutes or so. When the train arrived at the next stop the men stood up, preparing to disembark. As the stepped away from their seat my grandfather said something to them in a loud and cheery voice, clearly in the same language they had been speaking. All three men took a step backward (literally), turned ghostly white, and started babbling in whatever language they had been speaking. They stumbled off the train, walked over to the far edge of the platform, and immediately started arguing and gesturing back toward the train, where me and grandpa (who was clearly trying not to burst out laughing) still sat.
As we pulled out he told me that they were speaking Russian and while he didn’t speak the language he knew a few phrases. As they stood up to leave he had told them “goodbye, have a good day. Don’t get too wet out there in that rain!” He had no idea what they were talking about, but it was clear from their reaction that they didn’t want anyone to know what they had been discussing.
Just this afternoon I passed by a couple of guys standing by the stairs at the subway station.
Guy 1: You better watch that guy, make sure he doesn’t split with all the money.
Guy 2: No, he won’t do that, he knows we’ll kill him if he tries anything.
…I did not linger to hear any more of this delightful conversation.
A friend related this one to me years ago and it still amuses me.
He was at a restaurant, seated near a middle-aged couple. He could not hear the wife’s part of the conversation, if there was one, but the husband kept saying the same sentence repeatedly: “eat the goddamned frog legs.”
My friend said you could tell the husband was pissed off but trying hard not to make a scene, so he was sort of growling/hissing in a whisper that’s really not a whisper, over and over again: "eat the goddamned frog legs!"
mmm
I wonder if he was trying to convince himself or his wife to ‘eat the goddamned frog legs’. Either way, I don’t blame them for not eating the goddamned frog legs. They’re disgusting.
While Christmas shopping this past year, a couple of college students were shopping for the young man’s mother. They were cluelessly wandering through the boutique. The young woman asked what his mother liked to do, does she have any hobbies? He answered “Watch tv and cry”. She perkily suggested a box of tissues then.
I do this now and then on ski lifts. Every now an then I’ll get some Brazilians on a chair with me, and I’ll catch just enough to recognize it as Portuguese, but have no idea what they are saying. Or sometimes I do… Depends on the dialect.
Then, at the top of the lift, I’ll say, *“Goodbye, Folks!” *in perfect Portuguese (about all I know anymore) and watch their reaction.
I work as a volunteer coffee bar worker a couple of nights a week in an AA club. A few weeks ago 3 lesbians who i know very well and consider friends sat at the bar having a lively conversation about how they perform oral sex. only 1 of them actually gives it the other two receive it and they were talking about how they liked it.
Two women checking out in my store cashier line. One gets a cell phone call:
So how did the party go? (Long pause, then dropped jaw and thirty minutes of total silence). She what? No? Are you serious? She WHAT? Of what? So what did they do? Seriously? Really? Okay, I’ll call you back.
Turns out a daughter had put together an 85th surprise birthday party for her father, inviting people he hadn’t seen in decades, renting a hall, getting it all done. And then she dropped dead of a brain aneurysm at the party. And her father insisted on going on with the party after the ambulance took the body away.
I held it in for about ten seconds, then said “I’m sorry, but on one level that is so funny.” And I cracked up.
I also overheard a conversation in a 7-eleven parking lot when a guy was apparently telling another guy who had broken into a friend’s house where to find the “good things.” I just stood there, hoping the guy on the phone wouldn’t notice me. How stupid can you be?
Wow, that brings back memories!
My best friend had a 12” vinyl record of Shelley Berman routines that his parents had given him. We memorized each of the routines over a summer. That was one of the best sets!
I was on a train heading from a touristy town on Japan’s Pacific side back to Tokyo when I overheard a trio of guys dressed in sailor suits talking near the doors. They were making lusty comments about the Japanese women who were getting on and off the train and one would occasionally turn his foot to trip the men who were exiting the car. Since I’m Asian and can keep a blank face as well as my inscrutable relatives, the sailors had no idea I could hear – must less listen to – what they were saying. Most of it was rather complimentary and appreciative in a chauvinistic way, but the tripping attempts were irritating me. So, when it was my turn to leave the train, I stood and shuffled along like all the salary-men before me, then stumbled and ‘accidentally’ stomped on that foot that I knew was out there to trip me.
As the prankster yelled in pain and pulled his foot back, I looked surprised and imitated the sailors’ slang and accents, “Ay, Crikey, Mate! Sorry 'bou that, but yer stub shu’na been out there!”
I don’t know how close my imitation was (probably not all that good, really) but it was clear enough that I understood them and I could hear two of the men laughing and cajoling the other as the doors closed behind me and the train sped off toward Tokyo.
