Wow. It has been a long time since I did one of these. Like, the last one I did was at the end of 2017! I said in that post that I had a few more to share, mostly examples of things I've overheard at church, and then somehow a year and a half passed, and I never wrote it. Oh well, I'm here now, so let's do it!
For those of you who have never seen one of these posts before, it's pretty self explanatory. All of these stories are things that I have overheard in real life, at church, work, out in public, etc. This is different than my newer, "Out of Context" series, in that I include the whole conversation, and everything that happened is very clear. If you would like to read the other three posts I made in this series, I will have them linked here.
In the last post I said I still had conversations I'd overheard in church to share, so I will start with those. At least half of these I've probably had since then. Some are just random snippets of conversation that I have overheard, that really don't have anything to do with church, they just happened to take place there. Like this one, where I heard a little girl talking to her friend about a new culinary adventure she'd recently had.
"I ate clover! It's true! I promise it's true!"
Or this one, where a little old man started telling a story.
"When I was a small child, just before dirt was invented..."
Most of these overheard anecdotes happen between church and Sunday School. There's a fellowship/coffee time for people to visit and catch up, and a lot of random conversations can happen around me. Like when my grandma was discussing her favorite kinds of books with a group of elderly women.
Woman 1: “I like reading the Amish books.”
Woman 2: “Oh yes, me too.”
Woman 1: “I mean, they’re all the same story I guess, but I still like reading them.”
There was another time where another elderly woman was talking about her family when they were kids.
“My brother used to call me his ‘Little Muggin-Hose.’ I don’t know what that is, and maybe I should be insulted, but nobody could ever tell me what it was, and he’s gone to heaven now, so I guess I’ll never know.”I actually googled that phrase, in a variety of spellings, and I never figured out what it was, so hopefully I haven't accidentally profaned my blog with some kind of old-fashioned swear. 😆
Once in a while there will be some kind of food served during the coffee time, and one of those days there were a bunch of tiny bowls of fresh fruit sitting on a table for people to help themselves to, which led to a very random and hilarious interaction between an elderly couple.
Elderly Gentleman: "Oh look at that! We have Jell-O today!"He just looked at it and said, "Oh, okay." and went off to talk with someone else at a nearby table. He had missed church the previous Sunday, and this other person was wondering how he was feeling.
His wife (looking at him like he was crazy): "No it's not, it's fruit!"
Elderly Gentleman (cheerfully): "Oh, I'm still not feeling the greatest, but I'm on drugs today!"
One Sunday before Sunday school started I overheard a Sunday school teacher who taught one of the younger classes, talking about her students.
“Every day I ask the little kids how their day is going. They think it’s because I’m trying to be nice and get to know them, but really it’s because I want to be amused.”
Last year the church completely restructured the way they did Sunday school, but up until that point, I had been attending class with my grandma, and at that time they had the whole church divided into age groups. So I got quite a few gems from going to Sunday school with the seniors.
Such as the day the teacher came in and said, "Good morning! How's everyone doing?"
Another elderly person in the class immediately came back with, "Well, we're here."
The teacher of the senior class was himself a senior, and he had a quite a few of his own, including this one, which to me, was one of the funniest things he ever said. And it was completely by accident.
"And then, that translation of the Bible was called the Septuagint! I had to learn that word from the microwa- I-I-I mean the World Wide Web."He was completely serious, and it was all I could do not to just die laughing right there in class.
Another time he was talking about someone he heard on the radio.
"I was listening to a preacher on the radio, and he seemed to be pretty good, until he wanted to sell me a recipe for unleavened bread."
After the Sunday school classes were restructured, all the classes had a mix of people from all different age groups. In one of the first weeks of the new format, a woman greeted an elderly woman who entered the room.
Woman: "Good morning! Are you joining our class today?"I love dry humor, so this woman's delivery had me in stitches. Internally of course. Outwardly I was pretending I wasn't hearing anything.
Elderly Woman: "Well, yes."
Woman: "Well then our class is going to get wiser!"
Elderly Woman: "Oh?"
Woman: "Because you’re here!"
Elderly Woman: "Okay, well, I hope that makes some difference."
Other than at church, most of my overheard conversations come from work, but I do have a couple of exceptions this time. One was from my nephew's birthday party, where a little kid I didn't know was wearing a party hat, but at the front of his head, like a horn, and he had to show it off to someone, who I am assuming was his mom.
“Look! I’m a unicorn! I’ve finally transformed! Aren’t you proud of me?”Another anecdote was from a day I was at the zoo. We stopped in the gift shop, and as is pretty standard in zoo gift shops, there were plenty of children begging their parents for toys. I overheard this conversation between a pair of siblings who had just been turned down at the stuffed animal section, one of whom was significantly more pouty than the other.
Little Boy: "Our parents are so mean to us..."
Little Girl: "Not all the time..."
In the past, most of my overheard conversations have come from work, as I work at a grocery store, and I see a LOT of people. Since I got my job at the hotel I haven't worked nearly as much with the public as I used to, so this resource has mostly dried up, but I do still have a few examples from before my grocery hours went down. Such as this conversation between a little boy and a checker who must have known him.
Checker: "Did you have fun at pre-school?"
Little Boy: "Yeah! I was crying!"
Checker: "Oh no! Why were you crying?"
Little Boy: "I got in trouble."
Checker: "What?"
Little Boy: "I hit someone! But he hit me first!"
Checker: "Why didn't you tell a teacher instead?"
Little Boy: "I did!"
Checker: "Before or after you hit him back?"
Little Boy: *silence*
One day a very talkative, almost-but-not-quite hyperactive little boy came through my line with his mother and sister. He was rather energetic, and his sister seemed to be getting real fed up with his antics, and quipped:
"Jake, we're going to give you some night-night medicine!"I don't know exactly what that means, but apparently it wasn't good, because her mom looked horrified and exclaimed her name in shock.
"Samara!!!"
The day after a snow storm, one of the baggers at the store, a teenage boy, came in from helping a customer out with groceries. As he took off his coat he exclaimed, "It's so slippery, I was doing a Bambi dance out there!"
Church isn't the only place I overhear conversation between elderly people. I heard this one at the store while I was bagging for another checker.
Checker: “Did you find your husband?”A moment later a little old man came up beside her.
Elderly Woman: “Yeah I found him.”
Elderly Woman: “You said you’d be right back! I was about to ask them to call for you over the intercom. ‘Would little Davey please come to the front of the store?’”
Last year after I got the job at the hotel, I transferred to the grocery store's bakery to fit into my new overnight schedule a bit better. There are a lot fewer conversations to overhear back in the bakery, especially early in the morning, but I did get one. A small child was looking through a bakery display, in the middle of the summer.
“Mom! Look! They have Thanksgiving stuff already! See? It says pumpkin!”
At the hotel where I work now, we have a small, approximately foot-tall, bronze statue of the Iowa State University mascot, Cy, who is a buff cardinal, sitting on the desk/counter, by my computer, where we check in the guests. I just took a picture of it so you can see what I'm talking about.
One middle-aged guy seemed to like it a lot, and was commenting to his wife how they should get one. A minute later he called his teenage son over to show him the statue.
Dad: "William, look!"
Mom (To the son): "He's been rubbing it..."
Son (looking strangely at the dad): "That's weird, dad."
And that's all I have! I have no idea if I'll do another one of these posts, I haven't collected many of these since I started working at the hotel, I work overnights, so I don't see all that many people from which I can overhear hilarious conversations, but if I hear any, I'll keep collecting them just in case. If I get enough for another post in the future, I'll probably do another one, it is just unlikely to happen any time soon. :)
