Well, it's been a long time, a year and a half to be exact, but I am back with another post of overheard conversations! In case you don't remember, or missed the other two times I did one of these, all of these anecdotes are real conversations that I personally overheard and then wrote down to share later. Some days it pays to blend into the background. You never know what kind of weirdness people will say when they think no one is listening! Or when they don't care. Either way can be funny.
If you're curious, the previous two posts can be found
HERE and
HERE.
I've been collecting these since I did the last post, so I have quite a few new ones to share!
The most obvious place for me to overhear things is at work. Some customers will say anything, not paying attention to anyone around them. It's like they think we're a part of the store and not autonomous humans that can listen to everything they're saying. I suppose I should be insulted, but as long as they're not rude to me personally, and I get a story out of it, I'm kind of okay with being ignored. :p
A grandmotherly-aged woman was talking to her husband while looking at her phone as they came through my checkout line.
"I got a text from Dylan and he said his friend Jayden said 'Your grandparents are dope!' So I texted back and told him I was sorry we were dopey. And he just replied and he said, 'No grandma, being dope is good!' So I guess things have changed. Back in the day calling someone a dope was an insult!"
Earlier this year we had a total solar eclipse pass over our part of the country, and I heard a lot of people talking about it the day after. This was by far the weirdest one. It was from an old man, if that makes any difference.
“Well, I didn’t turn into a werewolf in the holocaust!”
In the holocaust. The HOLOCAUST. Just let that one sink in for a moment. No one corrected him, and he seemed completely unaware of what he had just said.
Another day, a mother was buying several boxes of macaroni and cheese, and as she unloaded her cart she said,
"My toddler just loves to eat the cheese dust out of the macaroni and cheese boxes. He calls it 'Shake shake.'"
Initially I laughed, and then I realized that, as she was buying quite a lot mac&cheese, she must have no problem with feeding her toddler copious amounts of processed chemical cheese dust, on a regular enough basis that he has given this 'snack' his own name, and I wasn't sure if I found it so funny anymore.
If you've shopped anywhere within the last six months, you've probably noticed that the credit cards with the chips are becoming more and more common. Unfortunately my store does not have the best chip readers, so it can take anywhere from 5 to 15 seconds longer than a normal swipe reader for the transaction to process. For some people this is an inconvenience of the highest caliber, about which they must loudly and rudely proclaim their anger and frustrations over. Those customers' stories I will not share here, though I may eventually end up killing one or two off, in my other series of work-related stories,
Twist Endings, but once in awhile I will get one of the sainted few who decide to make a joke of the *extremely minor* inconvenience of the chip readers. Case in point, the elderly woman who couldn't quite figure out what to do with her new card right away.
"Oh dear. I’m never going to live long enough to remember this."
Across the store one day I heard a whole bunch or racket so I looked toward the pet aisle, and I saw three little girls incessantly squeaking everything in a display of dog toys. Suddenly their mother appeared behind them and exclaimed,
“Unless you have 4 legs and a tail, put those down!”
Speaking of kids, the single most common type of overheard conversation comes from them. I have so many of these. They're all wildly different, and they're all hilarious.
Last year there was a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie released, and as with most new blockbuster films, we got a big cardboard display to set up in the store when the DVDs were released. Not long after the stand had been set up, a little girl with a very fit dad came through my line. By 'very fit' I mean that the dad was wearing a tight t-shirt and he had noticeably bulging muscles.
The little girl was probably around two or three, and as I rang up their groceries, the little girl was looking at the movie display. It's worth pointing out that these new Ninja Turtles are a bit more humanoid than the cartoony versions from the 80's and 90's, but they're still buff, green turtle monsters. The girl was studying them for awhile, and then turned to her dad, pointing at the display.
"Look! Daddy! Daddy, it’s you!"
The dad turned to look at what she was talking about, saw the muscular turtle-men, and quipped:
"Oh, thanks sweetie! Not sure how I feel about that..."
Another day a mother and child came through my line.
Child: "Mom! Mom! Can I have some chapstick?"
Mom: "No, you don't need it!"
Child: "But mom! My chips are chapped!"
Mom: "Your chips are chapped?"
Child: "Mom! No!! My lips!!"
Last year, one of the biggest online trends was the 'Bean Boozled Challenge.' The candy company, Jelly Belly, makes a game(?) where they package a bunch of different random flavors of jelly bean, with identical jelly beans of awful flavors. For example, the light green jelly beans might be lime, but they might also be boogers. For awhile, every other YouTuber was buying these jelly beans, and then they'd get together with a friend, and make a video, documenting their outrageous reactions to eating terrible flavors, like Skunk Spray, or Stinky Socks. And for some reason, this made these jelly beans insanely popular, and we were selling a lot of them. This was the funniest conversation around them that I heard during the craze, between a little girl and her mother.
Little Girl: "Mom! This one has dead fish! And rotten eggs!”
The Mom, feigning interest: "Oh!"
Little girl, very excitedly: “Last time I only got one bad one, and my brother got all the bad ones!"
She opened the package: “Mom! I found a barf one! And boogers! I don’t like those. Lawn clippings is okay though, right mommy?
"
Mom, as they left the store: “Well…”
Girl, interrupting: “There’s coconut! That’s a good one! But not baby wipes!”
Little girl, from far away: “I’m so excited!!!"
It's not always little kids, I've overheard some teenagers too. Like this one, where a group of boys came in to buy a bunch of Mexican sodas, which come in glass bottles. One set his bottles on the counter and turned to his friends.
“These bottles make great hammers! I used one of mine to pound in a tent stake!”
Okay kid, good luck with that.
Another time I overheard two younger teenage boys, discussing problems at school, culminating with one declaring everything he was going to do to fix it, 'Once he became president.' The other one replied,
"Yeah, well, when you're president, you're not going to care about middle school issues anymore."
Another place that I got a lot of great overheard material from this past year was at college. I'm out of school now, so that well has kind of dried up, but I collected a lot while I was there, especially from one class in particular. I had one teacher who was always coming up with something funny to say, and as this was a creative writing class, so were all the students. Here are some of those exchanges.
One of the first days, the teacher was trying to get to know the students.
Teacher: "What's your job?"
Student: "I'm a dog groomer."
Teacher: "Well you must be good at it because you don't have any chomp marks."
The teacher was talking to a student during role call.
Teacher: "So what did you do this weekend?"
Student: "I picked up my boyfriend from the airport. He was studying abroad in England."
Teacher: "Oh, that's exciting! Did you link pinkies all the way home?"
Student: "No..."
Teacher: "Oh... Well I would have."
During another role call:
Teacher: "Michael. Do you prefer Mike or Michael?"
Michael: "How about Mike when you're talking to me, and Michael when you're talking about me."
A student was talking about a guy he had seen, during an exercise where we were to observe a stranger for awhile and notice things about them that would be worth writing about if they were a fictional character.
Student: "He was playing a game on his phone."
Teacher:"What was he playing? Tetris? Farmville?"
A different student chiming in: "Well hello Mr. 2005. Did you know there's going to be a black president in three years?"
Teacher: "I have heard such things, yes."
The teacher also had some very random quips during conversations and lessons that just struck me as hilarious.
"It's not a good idea to eat lentils before a three mile race through the woods."
"I think she was an animal science major, because something just seemed, like, animal science-y about her."
"Did you ever play with paper dolls? You seem like someone who liked to color and snip."
This next one was from a completely different class, one that was optional for me, this class had the same teacher as the one I'd just finished, both advertising classes, and the teacher had invited my class to sit in for the guest speaker in his next class. There were two girls near me from that class, for whom the class was not optional, having a public, private conversation before the guest arrived
Student 1: "What even is this?"
Student 2: "This girl's coming in to talk about being a copywriter."
Student 1: "What even is that?"
Student 2: "A copywriter?"
Student 1: "Yeah."
Student 2: "They like, write all the copy. In ads."
Student 1: "Ooohhhhhhh... Do we even have to be here?"
This next one was just a random student I heard, I don't think he was in any of my classes, I think he was talking about a test he had to take, and it may actually have been in Sunday school at my grandma's church.
"You know that song by 'Bohemian Rhapsody'? Like, "I'm just a poor boy, nobody loves me," that's how I feel right now."
I mean, I've only ever heard a handful of songs by Queen, but even I know that it's the SONG that's called Bohemian Rhapsody.
One of my favorite classes in my last year of school was my poetry class, which was largely due to the teacher. She was just such a great person to be around, always friendly, always talking about random things that had happened in her life. Since she was a poet, this makes sense, as she mined her life experiences for poetry ideas. She also like to give life advice, such as this little gem, from her first marriage during her time in a traveling rock band.
"You should never marry your heavy metal guitar player. Just a little life advice for you guys."
Well, I think that's going to be all for this post. I actually still have more than this, I didn't really even touch on most of what I've overheard at church, but I think I'll save that for next time. Hopefully I'll get to the next one sooner than I did for this one. :p
