September 1, 2014 by gn0mel0ver

Overheard in August 2014

I am an eavesdropper. A shusher of current company. A nosey woman who wants to know about every single character in the world or at least the interesting things that they say. But I do not want them to tell me. I want to hear their world myself. Even a secret snippet of it:

I was out shopping and I got to talking with a dressing room attendant. He was a smiling, lanky young man with a cheerful soul so often found mixed with the mischievous. His spirit animal would have been a monkey and I happily watched him working for a bit. He was in high school. I did not go to a high school that contained a lot of vanity. No “Heathers” or “Mean Girls” scenarios. Just down to Earth kids, so when I sat there and witnessed this exchange I was both equal parts intrigued and equal parts sad:

A young man came to the dressing room with a singular top to try on. He had a stiff stocky build and shaggy hair. His spirit animal on first glance would be an ox. However, he had an air of disdain radiating from his curled lip not typically found in that animal.

“Do you want to try that on?” Chirped the friendly young man.

The ox nodded once.

“Okay! Hey! Do you go to So and So High School?” Questioned the nice young man.

Another reluctant nod.

“I thought so! You hang out with Queen A and King B, right?”

This time the nod was accompanied by a tight lip, followed by a sneer. This was getting much too personal for the ox. He didn’t like the monkey being that familiar with him.

The monkey could sense the change, but did not alter his attitude. “Okay! Well, just let me know if you need anything.”

I did not see the stiff and popular young man leave, I only witnessed the nice young man rehanging up the top and putting it away. It made me really question, what makes someone popular? Why is it sometimes not the right person? And would I ever want to go back to high school? The answer to the first two questions are unknown to me, but the last question, I know the answer to and it is a definitive shaking of my head.

We are not done with the dressing room attendant. Right now he is our young hero. Sweet and optimistic. I wonder how you will feel about him as we watch him a bit longer:

The young man turned to my son, “What school are you going to? Are you back to school shopping?”

When my son told him the name of the middle school and that, yes, he was back to school shopping, the boy said, “I have not started shopping. I get my first paycheck this Friday. I am so excited!” And “I went to that school! What teachers did you get?”

I congratulated the happy boy on his first job and my son rattled off the two names of his main teachers.

The boy said, “Oh! I think I had Mrs. Teacher. Is she really old?”

I started to respond, “no,” but then caught myself and laughed, “Well, no, she is not old, but she might be to you. She is in her mid-forties.”

The young man chucked, “Yea, that is getting up there. Forty is definitely getting up there,” he nonchalantly stated to the almost forty year old mom.

“But I am only sixteen, so anything over thirty is old to me.”

Did you know monkeys threw daggers?

Yea, me neither. But they do. Right to your heart. Made of funny words, of course. And only at people over thirty.

Do you remember Predict-A-Pen? Well, when my son had his birthday party to celebrate turning eleven, he had a few friends over. One of the friends found my Predict-A-Pen (and my social security number, the break-up letter from my fourteen year old boyfriend, my diamond earring I lost ten years ago and my brain). I overheard him asking it a few questions:

“Will we meet any foxy ladies in junior high school?”

Not for a million dollars.

“Will we meet any foxy blondes?”

If you’re lucky.

“Will we meet any foxy brunettes?”

Dude. No way.

“Will any of us marry a foxy lady?”

It’s unclear. Ask again.

“Will…”

I love Predict-A-Pen.

I was at the local grocery store checking out with my staples to make dinner when the young cashier looked at me and smiled. “You look like Taylor Dfvrvsasuioooo,” she said. Well, she did not really say that last name, but I could not hear what she said or who she thought I looked like.

As the line was long, I just said, “thank you.”

Then she tried to reassure me, “Only you look better, because you are not scowling.”

I again thanked her, but I was beginning to wonder if she was really giving me a compliment.

I left the grocery store and went home. I approached my family sitting at the breakfast table. “A girl at the grocery store said I looked like someone only not scowling. Who could that be?”

My husband and daughter began to ponder the question. Who do I look like, only not scowling? My son looked me up and down, his forehead furrowed with thought, then he beamed as the answer came to him, “I know! Professor McGonagall!”

The kid might want to practice his compliments if he wants to meet any foxy ladies in the future.

*I think the girl must have said Taylor Momsen, although it could have been Professor McGonagall, my hearing might be going and my wand was sticking out of my purse.

On Monday, I was at a local restaurant waiting for my to-go lunch order. I overheard a manager speaking to an employee as they huddled together over a packet of rumpled papers.

“This new menu goes up on Wednesday.”

The manager gave the papers over to the employee and started to walk away. “I will just look them over on Wednesday,” he stated.

The employee looked up, “So it will be fresh in your mind?”

The manager chuckled, “No. I am just hoping I will be less drunk on Wednesday than I am today.”

“Is it left over from Friday?” the employee, who was working on Monday, asked.

The manager shook his head, no. “Every day is Friday to me,” he responded.

If you went into that restaurant on Wednesday to eat off of that new menu and your order was messed up… It is because it was Friday.

Have you overheard anything good this month? Anything worth sharing?

*If you missed it, here is a link to last month’s Overheard in July 2014.

August 2, 2014 by gn0mel0ver

Overheard In July 2014

With Comic Con and so many treks outside of the house this month, I overheard a great deal more weird and absurd things than I normally do. I also overheard something heartbreaking. Balance… And all of that.

It’s the weekend. Let’s just get right to the eavesdropping:

At the Rose Bowl Flea Market, an old man was setting up his booth to sell his wares. He looked up and when he saw me, he approached me and said, “Have you come here to collect your iceberg detector?”

Huh? I stood there blinking. Then I walked away. All day I asked my husband what the man meant by that comment. We still do not know. But now I want to say something absurd to a random stranger that will make them wonder all day.

It is important to spread the love.

And why do I look like I need an iceberg detector?

And why do I need one?

And most importantly… What the heck is an iceberg detector?

I was at Trader Joe’s buying flowers. The older woman in the lane next to mine was also purchasing flowers. She was with her friend.

The cashier commented on her pretty flowers and she responded, “My husband passed away four years ago today. My friend didn’t want me to be alone. At my age, I am not looking to meet anyone else. So, what else am I going to do at 6:25 tonight besides leave flowers at his graveside?”

This broke my heart.

And made me appreciate her friend. I was glad she was not alone. At 6:25 that night I thought of her and hoped she was okay.

I was at a diner (which by the way is the absolute best place to eavesdrop). Two elderly women were chatting about their week.

They were discussing the merits of Bingo and the cost involved (we eat early).

“I went to… What is it called… Is it Weird Wednesday?

“You mean Wacky Wednesday?”

“Yes! Wacky Wednesday!”

“I got six cards for the price of two. You should come with me next time.”

The other woman agreed to do so.

Before they could discuss their future Bingo plans, a baby shrieked in the restaurant for the third time in five minutes.

One of the women pierced her lips and leaned over to the family sitting at a table next to their own. She spoke to them in a conspiratorial whisper, but I could still hear her.

“One time I was out to dinner and a kid screamed just like that. Before the kid could finish that scream, a waitress popped a lollipop in the kid’s mouth.

Well, it worked, but there was a bigger problem.

Other kids saw her give that kid the sucker and then they began to shriek for their own. One child was quieted, only now the rest of ’em were screamin’.”

She began to chuckle and leaned back into her own booth, lost in her memories.

At Comic Con, I overheard the following snippets of conversation from numerous people:

I can’t wait for that pizza!

My feet hurt!

Greg has a strict rule of not working out the week before Comic Con.

Please keep moving there’s no stopping here.

I cannot wait for my paycheck (said by a security guard)

I had no idea it would be like this!

I try to tell her everyday but everyday she comes. So far she has been a loser all three days. There is no benefit to waiting hours and hours.

There are going to be many things that you want.

I could see her undercarriage!

I was at the doctor’s office and I overheard the following conversation between a grandmother and her four year old granddaughter:

“Now remember, when you are camping, pick your things up off of the floor! It is going to be crowded as it is and with the new baby and all of those diapers, there is not going to be a lot of room.”

“Grandma, did you ever wear diapers?”

A soft laugh and then, “Yes, but it was a very long time ago. And they were not the diapers they have today. In fact, your mom did not have those kind of diapers either.”

“What kind of diapers did you guys wear?”

“Well, they were cloth and we washed them.”

“But what did you do with the -” she whispered the last contents of that sentence but I think we can assume that it had to do with contents, too.

“We flushed it down the toilet.”

“Eeewwwwwwwww!!!”

The little girl had many more questions but the grandmother distracted her with questions of her new puppy. Which from the sound of that conversation, seemed like that puppy could have used some diapers of its own.

What did you overhear last month? Anything interesting? Did you find your iceberg detector?

If you missed last month’s “Overheard In,” you can find it here.

July 1, 2014 by gn0mel0ver

Overheard In June 2014

Oh, the things that were overheard this month. Really just very small snippets of conversation. I was lucky we went on vacation, because we have spent so much of our time at home. If you missed “Overheard In” last month, you can find it here.

Things I heard kids say in the pool at our hotel:

“Please don’t let me die.”

“Why don’t I go underwater and you stand on top of me?”

“I want you to hit me with the ball so I can tell my mommy.”

That last line was said by a child. And, okay, I usually will not go here, but that child. Was a product of his mother. And if you picture the most annoying child you can imagine, the child was a perfect caricature of that. Oh, that is so mean. But it is true. I kept looking for the child’s mother, because he was about six years old and much too young to not be supervised.

Well, the mom finally walked through the water just in time to see her son do a backflip, whilst almost cracking his head on the side of the pool, and land right on top of another child. On purpose. For both of our sakes, it was lucky that child was not my own.

This is what the mom said to the other crying child:

“That was quite the crash. I am sure it was an accident.”

We gave up our cabana and left because she did not just have that one son. But three. There were THREE of them!

When we were at my favorite breakfast place in Maui, a little whiny boy ran up to tattle on a little girl at his table. It was obvious that the little boy had his mother wrapped around her finger as she replied:

“Emma is an evil, evil child.”

That response still makes me giggle and I have to admit to using it in a random point in recent conversations.

My son had to get changed in our hotel room. Instead of stating that he was getting changed in the bathroom, he said, “Nobody come into the place where you clean your hands. I will be getting changed.”

Now I think of the bathroom as the place you clean your hands.

At a restaurant:

“My momma always used to say, ‘you can’t run faster than a truck.’ She was right. I could never run faster than my daddy.”

I love that. It has some scary truth to it.

When we went to visit the crater, we were amongst tourists. There was a mountain where you were obviously not supposed to climb. And there were teenagers obnoxiously climbing it. The father of the boys in the most monotonous voice called to his sons:

“Get off the mountain. Use the trail.”

The sons replied, “We are using the trail.”

They were not.

Ten minutes later, I overheard a huge buff man tell his son, “If I wasn’t in such a good mood, I would have waited for those kids at the bottom and kicked their a**. I cant believe they would climb up there. Disgusting.”

Those kids had no idea that the climb was not the most dangerous part of their day and lucky that the view was so pretty.

Incidentally, that man generously volunteered to take a picture of my husband and myself together.

We did not turn him down.

Did you overhear anything good in June? Anything worth sharing? I would love to hear it.

June 1, 2014 by gn0mel0ver

Overheard In May 2014

May was a weird month. I kept getting bad news. And it seemed those around me were receiving bad news. And the bad news compiled into a quicksand hole of stress that I could feel myself struggling through as I tried to meander through each day.

Well, two nights ago, we had incredibly good news (about my son’s health). If you are wondering why I am sharing this in my overheard post, it is to explain the scream of jubilation you must have heard from your house.

Sorry about that. It was from my husband.

It went like this:

“Wheeeeeeewwwwww! Waaaaoooooooeeeeeewwwwww!”

This was repeated and fist pumped and jumped through the house. I told him I had never ever seen him so happy. It made the month of May close on a sweet note.

With that said, I spent much of the month at home with my son or in the doctor’s office, so I did not hear much. But what I did overhear, I will share with you:

At The Cheesecake Factory we sat outside and to our left, was a beautiful German couple in their early twenties. They were hipster cool in an easy-not-on-purpose kind of way. They would have made the people actually trying for this look fall on their knees and rip at their hats.

They ordered a chocolate malt and a slice of cheesecake. For lunch. Or breakfast. It was eleven o’clock. Which again, was cool without trying to be cool.

I don’t think I have ever had a moment like that.

The waitress returned after a few minutes to inform them that the kitchen thought they might be out of malt. She told the couple that they might want to pick something else on the menu.

They both grinned at her and said, “This is okay. But we do not know this word, ‘malt.’ What is it? What does it mean?”

Well, the waitress was not expecting that answer. And she just kind of stood there trying to determine if she knew the answer. I don’t blame her. I am not sure what I would have said myself.

So she said, “It’s the stuff that makes a malt a malt.”

And they grinned wider.

And she hastily left, returning minutes later with cheesecake…and a chocolate malt!

“They found some malt in the kitchen,” she said.

She left the desserts on the table with obvious relief.

The couple only ate two bites of cheesecake and a few sips of the malt before they asked to take the food to go.

Then they cooly sauntered away. Both of their perfect hats faced towards a new adventure.

I volunteered at my son’s school two weeks ago (for the first time all year. It is hard as they get older. They get bigger. I get lazier). The fifth grade was doing a colonial day reenactment. They got to pick five items to make that they would have made back in the colonial days. I was helping at the book binding booth.

It was actually quite comical to hear the different conversations around me. Here is one:

A tall fifth grade boy sweetly grabbed one of the pillows his friend had made, and rubbed it on his cheek. He put his head on the pillow that was so small it barely fit into his hand, and proclaimed in the most innocent voice, “Oh. They feel so good. I should have made this.”

In the triage across from us (at the ER), there was a two year old who had ingested her grandparent’s prescription medicine. She screamed as they force-fed charcoal into her system. The mother sang Barney lyrics in an eerily high and enchanting voice, “I love you. You love me…” And then it randomly changed to, “Clean up. Clean up. Everybody do their share. Cle-”

The little girl left a few hours later: tired, confused, perfectly healthy. And the mother handled the whole thing with such gentle grace.

After they left, one nurse said to the other, “you have charcoal splattered all over your scrubs.”

The other nurse shrugged and said, “I don’t have another pair with me.”

To which the first nurse softly said, “Don’t worry. It really isn’t noticeable unless you are looking for it.”

And it was wrong. Oh, so wrong. But that mother’s last song began playing itself in my head.

“Cle-”

In the hospital bed next to us at the emergency room, a fifteen year old boy had severed his big toe almost completely off. I did not ask how, but believe me, I was curious.

When he was being discharged (after they had performed the reattachment surgery), they gave him some interesting advice.

“Make sure you keep changing the diaper* on your toe. I know it is unusual, but the diapers will absorb the fluids that are draining.”

Who knew?

*I believe this is what I heard. But I could be wrong. I cannot find any information on diapers being used for wounds. So, maybe I was delirious with exhaustion or maybe it is a new thing. Please take it for what you will.

I was at Trader Joe’s purchasing peonies and a few other staples, when I went down an aisle, and saw a mother pick up a jar of Trader Joe’s Clarified Butter and say to her daughter:

“Let me just clarify something for you. This. Is. Butter.”

I laughed. And I bought the clarified butter. I had forgotten I had wanted to try it. Making it is a pain.

How was your month of May? Did you overhear anything good?

If you missed April’s “Overheard In”, you can find it here.

Gnome Lover

Stumbling through life while still having fun

eavesdrop

Overheard in August 2014

Overheard In July 2014

Overheard In June 2014

Overheard In May 2014