You'd think that once the school year ended that it would have marked the end of a year of transit oddities. It appears that this is not the case.
Today I boarded the Skytrain, part of my usual 1.5 hour trip to school. In my experience, commuters in the morning are almost totally silent. Whether it's from sleepiness or from unwillingness to give someone else the excuse to strike up a conversation I'm not sure. In any case, my ride this morning was definitely not silent.
Generally I try to avoid eavesdropping (or let's just assume I do) but this morning it was impossible. This morning I experienced the strangest conversation I'd ever overheard.
I suppose the weirdest thing about it was the span of topics that two middle aged men were able to cover in the half hour that I spend on the train. Here is what they talked about, as I tried desperately to concentrate on my crossword:
- Some scheme that the two of them were planning, involving a lake, some sort of trickery and a woman who they had yet to meet and convince to be part of the trick
- The fact that one of them had no clue that the train was leaving Surrey and that we were actually not travelling towards Surrey, resulting in the other man gesturing around the train car stating "Ah yes; these are Surrey people"
- One of the men explaining to the other how he would "find a girl" for the aforementioned scheme, who was then told he could never get a girl unless he had some cologne to cover his stink. The stinky man expressed his preference for Hugo Boss.
- The stinky man's random outburst of "Rapper's Delight" which he performed in its entirety to the amusement and/or chagrin of the other passengers
- The stinky man's notice of my crossword and exclamation to his friend that "crosswords are impossible"
- A minute or so of silence, followed by the apparently-not-stinky man reminding the stinky man of his stinkyness, and the resulting altercation
- Another semi-tuneful outburst from the stinky man and his claim that his singing voice sounds like Axl Rose ("claim" being the operative word)
Completely strange. But I'm sure that if you pay attention to your own conversations (I know I do: "How did we start talking about THIS?") you start to notice how many weird, ridiculous, sometimes downright demented things happen in the course of one conversation. This is one of the few cases where I'm glad some people are loud/arrogant/secure enough to share their lives with a train car full of strangers.
Ah, the randomness of conversation. Sometimes it's worth eavesdropping.
Today I boarded the Skytrain, part of my usual 1.5 hour trip to school. In my experience, commuters in the morning are almost totally silent. Whether it's from sleepiness or from unwillingness to give someone else the excuse to strike up a conversation I'm not sure. In any case, my ride this morning was definitely not silent.
Generally I try to avoid eavesdropping (or let's just assume I do) but this morning it was impossible. This morning I experienced the strangest conversation I'd ever overheard.
I suppose the weirdest thing about it was the span of topics that two middle aged men were able to cover in the half hour that I spend on the train. Here is what they talked about, as I tried desperately to concentrate on my crossword:
- Some scheme that the two of them were planning, involving a lake, some sort of trickery and a woman who they had yet to meet and convince to be part of the trick
- The fact that one of them had no clue that the train was leaving Surrey and that we were actually not travelling towards Surrey, resulting in the other man gesturing around the train car stating "Ah yes; these are Surrey people"
- One of the men explaining to the other how he would "find a girl" for the aforementioned scheme, who was then told he could never get a girl unless he had some cologne to cover his stink. The stinky man expressed his preference for Hugo Boss.
- The stinky man's random outburst of "Rapper's Delight" which he performed in its entirety to the amusement and/or chagrin of the other passengers
- The stinky man's notice of my crossword and exclamation to his friend that "crosswords are impossible"
- A minute or so of silence, followed by the apparently-not-stinky man reminding the stinky man of his stinkyness, and the resulting altercation
- Another semi-tuneful outburst from the stinky man and his claim that his singing voice sounds like Axl Rose ("claim" being the operative word)
Completely strange. But I'm sure that if you pay attention to your own conversations (I know I do: "How did we start talking about THIS?") you start to notice how many weird, ridiculous, sometimes downright demented things happen in the course of one conversation. This is one of the few cases where I'm glad some people are loud/arrogant/secure enough to share their lives with a train car full of strangers.
Ah, the randomness of conversation. Sometimes it's worth eavesdropping.
