Thursday, February 28, 2008

overheard on the bus

riding on the bus back uptown after an exhausting day at work (more on that in a later post), i noticed a middle-aged couple sitting across from me. an asian woman with shoulder length straight hair, serious air, and wrapped up in a fur lined coat and a caucasian man with rimmed glasses and a grey mustache adorned in suit and overcoat. occasionally the man would look up from his paper and mutter something to the woman. she seemed to mostly ignore him, transfixed by her phone. . . that didn't seem to stop him.

man: y'know what's worse than a male chauvinist?

woman: silently gazing at her hands

man: (triumphantly) a woman who doesn't do what she says!

what was the woman thinking?

a. dear God why did i marry this man?

b. i wonder if anyone else heard him? maybe if i pretend that he didn't say anything, everyone else will do teh same. . .

c. dear God, will this stranger stop talking to me?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

no no see this is what happened. he came home, and she wasn't there. she had said she was going to take care of dinner, but then got caught up at work. so rather than doing the nice thing and throwing something together himself, he just waited around for her to get home. when she did, he was all truculent. "what are we going to do for dinner now?" she called him a chauvinist--"why don't you step up and start doing more housework?" a knock down drag out followed, but finally they agreed to go out to an old haunt uptown, maybe the old ghosts of themselves in the first blush of their love would cheer them up. and now, she's trying to get past the fight but he just can't let it go. fortunately, they've been together for so long, they can weather this kind of thing. he vents. she pretends not to hear. they have a nice dinner, drink a bottle of wine, fond conversation. they go home, have reasonably energetic for late-middle-age makeup sex, and bam. hatchet buried. no harm done.

it's quite beautiful, really. i'm misty-eyed.
~AH

v said...

and THAT my dear friend, is exactly why you need to grace the bloggersphere with a blog with your eavesdropping stories!!!

nuf said.