i overheard a young thirty something lady standing behind me in the grocery check-out line bark at her friend, you're kidding! the ridleys are foreclosing? geez, well if you think they have problems wait till you hear this. last night i overheard my sister-in-law call that beautiful coach bag i have, you know, that one you love—
the second lady interrupted, ya mean that big, pink, leather one?
the first lady said, yeah! that one!
the second lady said, i love that bag.
the first lady continued, tell me about it! well she called it "tj max cheese"! can you believe it?
the second lady yelled, shut up girl!
then the first lady lamented, i'll tell ya, if she weren't my sister-in-law, i'd put the stink eye on her something terrible!
they both fell silent for what i thought was a moment of much needed self-reflection.
i was wrong.
the first lady said, what a shame.
the second lady said, yeah, the poor ridleys.
the first lady pointed at the enquirer in the magazine rack and said, no, i'm talking about that pig brad pitt breaking angelina's heart by having a love child with their nanny's druggy twin sister! look at her face! She's a broken woman, that angelina is.
the second lady added, oh yeah, and she's starting to look warn out too! look at all those wrinkles.
then the first lady opined, is there no end to the madness?
that is when it occurred to me that i had inadvertently stepped into an alternate universe in which life crises worth fretting about are those which are born from the loins of high school cafeterias.
so i shut my eyes real tight and repeated softly, beam me up scotty! oh please! oh please! oh please beam me up scotty!
sadly, as of this writing, i remain unbeamed and locked in this incubator of idiocy.
3 comments:
Sounds like the conversation I heard at Linens & Things before they went out of business. Two young women were complaining about the fact they couldn't buy sheets in L & T with 825 thread count. They went on and on and on.
Timing is everything. Those types of conversation are usually overheard when the bottom of your real world is about to fall out. Like finding out someone you love has a terminal illness.
"incubator of idiocy"
I wish I had thought up that line.
I won't steal it for any writing, but I can't wait to say it to fellow inhabitants of the incubator.
I usually LOVE to eavesdrop but this conversation would have prompted me to change the line I was in at the grocery store. Good grief!
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