Overheard 3

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

Overheard 2

Ever since I published my last Overheard post, I've been collecting more overheard conversations. It's sometimes really hilarious what you will overhear. Church, school, work, overheard hilarity can come from anywhere. And it has.

Let's start with work. A lot of funny stuff happens when a little kid wants something.

This first one is a little girl about 8.

Little Girl: "Mom, can I have some Tic Tacs?" (She's holding up a box of orange ones.)
Mom: "Oh, I suppose. Do you want the orange ones?"
L.G.: "No, I want the green ones." *Grabs green Tic Tacs* "No wait, I want the orange ones."
Mom: "Why don't you get the box that has all the colors in it?"
L.G.: "No, I want the green ones." *Sets down the green box* "No, wait, the orange ones."
The little girl plunks the orange box on the belt and walks away from the display.
L.G.: "Mom, I am being such a Gemini right now!"

Regular people can sometimes be just as funny as kids. I'm sure this next lady wasn't trying to be funny, but she was. She was walking by a display of red, white, and blue M&Ms. She stopped dead in her tracks and turned to a nearby employee and exclaimed in genuine excitement, "Oooh! Look how patriotic they are!" As if the inanimate objects were showing some sort of overzealous love of country, instead of being a clever marketing ploy aimed at... Well, people like her. :p

I've said this before, but old people can be hilarious. This exchange happened at work.

Little old man: "Why'd you go and get green bananas? I'm not going to live that long!"
Little old lady: "You'd better! I just bought a new stove!"

And it's not just at work. I've heard quite a few gems at the nursing home where my grandpa lives.

There was one day where we were all sitting in grandpa's room, and we heard a repeating pounding sound, coming down the hall, getting closer and closer. When it was right outside, we heard a nurse approaching.

Nurse: “What are you doing, Gladys? Why are you pounding on the walls?”
*No answer*
Nurse: “No, don’t go in there, that’s someone’s room! Are you looking for someone?”
Gladys: “A dentist!”
Nurse: “A dentist? Are your teeth bothering you?”
Gladys: “No, but they might!”

Sometimes it's not even the initial statement that is funny, which I didn't even hear, but the reaction to it. Like this one time I heard a nurse burst out laughing in the alzheimer's unit and say: "You'd better NOT have a man living with you!"

Church is also a wellspring of hilarity. The kids in the college age Sunday school classes can be quite funny, sometimes without even trying. Like one time where I overheard the end of a conversation between two guys. 

"It was in that Tarantino movie. You know, the one where those guys were Inglorious."

If you don't get the reference, just Google "Inglorious", and you'll get why the guy in Sunday School, didn't want to just come out and say the title. :p

A lot of times the responses to questions from the teacher are also hilarious.

Sunday School Teacher: "Did you see your sister's play?"
(The girl he was talking to shook her head)
SSTeacher: "You didn't? What kind of a sister are you?"

A low "Ooooh!" murmured around the room and one guy across the room exclaimed "Savage!"

During the Christmas program a child was reciting Psalm 37:4, which goes as follows:

“Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.”

The kid actually did pretty well, except instead of the word "Desires," he said "Diseases." It was all I could do to not burst out in laughter right there in the middle of service.

I'm not sure what this next conversation even means, but I overheard this from another little boy at church. I'm assuming he was talking about a video game, but it was in the middle of a church event, so it struck me as hilarious.

Little Boy: "I found an enchanted bow, with three protection, and one fire! At my cousin's!"

School is by far where I hear the most funny stuff. half of it seems to happen as I'm walking across campus, or sitting on the bus or in class. I'll just hear a random snippet of a conversation that sounds hilarious.

Girl on the bus: "We ate snapping turtle once. It tasted like chewy rubber."

Girl in class: "I can't believe I missed The Bachelor last night! Don't tell me who won!"
Girl 2: >Gasp!< "You don't know who won?"
Girl 1: "Well I accidentally saw it online, but I forgot."

Girl at school: "I mean, it could be fun, if the professor wasn't, like, drier than Arizona dirt."

Classmate 1: “So my roommate got totally drunk last night, and she left all these half-empty containers all over our apartment. So I took them all into her room and put them in her shoes. Now she thinks she’s crazy. She got up this morning and asked me, “Why did I put all my booze in my shoes?”
Classmate 2: “That sounds like an adult Doctor Seuss book. The Booze in the Shoes.” 

My Journalism Law class last semester seemed to produce a few gems. Mostly from my teacher who was kind of weird, in a hilarious sort of way. Like, he was always talking about his cat, Pattycake.

Journalism Law Teacher: "This morning at five o'clock, Pattycake learned what happens when you stick your paw, or tail, or other appendages into a running fan, and she felt obligated to share, quite loudly. So our lesson today, is don't stick your paw into a running fan, and don't hold an unlawful public meeting."

Like, always.

Tranquil pan flute music began to play somewhere in class, and was abruptly silenced.

Teacher: "Awe! I was about to achieve enlightenment! First Pattycake bites me, then you destroy my one chance at nirvana! Welcome to Monday of Dead Week!"

Those were just two examples. He talked about her at least once a week, but unfortunately I didn't write them all down. His anecdotes about Pattycake weren't the only times he was funny though, he had plenty of other moments. Like one day when we were learning about obscenity laws, and he was pretending to be the characters in his made up scenarios.

Teacher: "Let's go back to the 1970's." *Mimicking a prosecutor* "'Look at these pictures, there are people kissing and holding hands, but one is white and one is black! Members of the jury, this depiction of inter-racial affection is patently offensive, and grossly obscene!'"
*From an iPhone in the back of the room:*
Siri: "I'm sorry, I didn't get that."

And the class burst out laughing.

My other classes produced a few gems too. Even in my Arts & Entertainment Journalism class, which was my favorite class last semester, not everyone felt like I did though.

Teacher: "I have a stack of graded papers THIS TALL *gesturing with his hands* to give back to you guys. They're in alphabetical order and everything. It's going to be like Christmas."
Girl in class under her breath: "Yeah I bet it's going to be disappointing like Christmas too."

Classmate: "Can you re-send the requirements for the final essay again?"
Teacher: "I have not sent them yet, I'll be doing that soon."
Classmate:"Oh! I am less unprepared than I thought!"

This was the last class of the semester, and a student was trying to sneak out before the lecture was over. The teacher stoped in the middle of his sentence.

Teacher: "See you, Trey! Have a good life!"

The class burst out laughing and a girl shouted: "Oooh!!! Called out!!!"

My favorite teacher, aside from my A&E Journalism teacher who was great simply for the fact that he was teaching the fun class, was my advertising teacher. She is from South Korea, and she could be quite funny at times. I didn't write many things down, but she was always talking about her dogs back home, or her love of sports, and how superstitious she was. By far her funniest moment for me was this exchange, in the middle of class.

Girl: “There’s a bug in here!”
Guy: “It’s a wasp!”
Girl 2: “No! I’m allergic!”
Teacher (In her adorable Korean accent): “Do we have anyone here who can communicate with the wasp?”

That's all I've got for now. I will keep my ears peeled for more though. Hopefully I'll have another post in a few months. :)

Overheard

It has been quite awhile since I published something original, something not a video, so today, I'm releasing something totally different than anything else I've done before. And if you couldn't tell by the fact that I just spent an hour making a logo for it, I really liked it, and it will probably become a series.

Have you ever been out somewhere and you overheard something out of context (or sometimes even in context) that just struck you as hilarious? It seems to happen to me a lot, so I decided to start saving them to share. Originally I would post things like this on Facebook, but there were a couple days that so many happened over the course of a few hours, that I decided to start writing them down, to use in a post like this.

This all started at my grandma's church in Ames. The other college kids can be pretty funny to listen to, and one day they just seemed to have a whole bunch of weird one liners that cracked me up.

These first ones are bits of conversations that I caught out of the hubbub of random dialogue around me. Usually the line that was spoken or shouted the loudest is what I heard.

"Hey, Jesus wasn't white!"

"OJ didn't do it!"

"I have a bone to pick with cheerleaders." 

"I wish they would have had pictures back then. How do we know Jesus had a full beard? What if he had some condition where he couldn't grow facial hair?" 

Here, I was the only person in the room when two other guys walked in and saw some items on the chairs left by other students.

Guy 1: "Who's stuff is this?" 

Guy 2: "Your mom's."

This was part of a discussion group dialogue.

Discussion leader: "Ok, you can have the last word, you have 12 minutes." 

Guy with last word: "I don't need 12 minutes, I wasn't raised baptist."

These next two were conversations I overheard while visiting my grandpa at the nursing home in Story City. They are both conversations between two residents.

 "It's 15 minutes until 2 o'clock." 

"What?" 

"It's 15 minutes until 2 o'clock." 

"What?" 

"It's 15 minutes until 2 o'clock." 

"What?" 

"It's 15 minutes until 2 o'clock." 

"What about socks?"

Another conversation I overheard, it may have actually been the same two people from the previous conversation, started when I heard an earsplitting BRAAAAAAAAAPP!!!!!!!!! (An enormous belch) from across the room. Not missing a beat, as if nothing had happened, the belcher, an elderly "Gentleman" tried to strike up a conversation with the little old lady next to him.

Elderly Gentleman: "Those shoes look like they're brand new." 

Little Old Lady: "Well they're not." 

*Silence* 

EG: "Time for a little nap." 

LOL: "Well I hope so. Simmer ya down maybe." 

I didn't have quite as many opportunities for people watching while I was back in Harlan, but I did overhear a few while at work at Hy-Vee.

A little girl was climbing to the top of a large stack of Gatorade.

Little Girl: I'm the Gatorade Queen! 

LG's Mother: Get off of there! 

A group of elderly gentlemen were having a long conversation in the dining room that I missed most of, as I was at the other side of the room, but when I got up to throw away my trash, this is what I overheard.

"How do they even get into those high heeled shoes?" 

"I don't know, I think they grow into them." 

"I think they get up on the top bunk and step down into them."

Totally different day, a couple months later, the same group of men were gathered, as usual.

"I don't have anyone to cook for me." 

"Why don't you get married?"

"I tried that already." 

"Well, try again!"

A mom with a little boy, probably two-years-old, came through another checker's line.

"I told him he could pick out any candy he wanted, and what does he choose? Bandaids."

A woman came through my line with  a little girl, somewhere between 6 a 8, and started walking away without her bag, so I picked it up.

"Don't forget your bag!"

"Oh, well, thats why I have this one."

She gestured to the girl who dutifully took the bag. As they walked out the door the little girl must have asked why she had to carry the groceries because I heard her mother say:

"Because I carried you for 9 months."

A couple came through my line, and as I scanned their items they just kept on talking.

"Why am I yawning?"

"You haven't had enough sleep."

 "Well I need to get some sleep. I know your mom is going to text us for church in the morning. The only reason I'm going is-"

"'Cause you'll hear all about it?"

"Yeah. I'm not scared of God, I'm scared of your mom."

Life Happens

So I suppose you're wondering why I haven't uploaded any of the pictures I said I would. Well, I've been very busy. I have been working almost every day at the store, and when I haven't worked, I've had something else that needed doing, clothes shopping in the city, house cleaning, youngest brother graduating, life in general.

Today we helped some friends load up a moving truck. Most of you know we have a home church, and it has been led by a retired pastor for the last... 7, 8 years? A very long time anyway. Earlier this year they announced that they would be moving to Tennessee to be closer to their sons, and tomorrow their son arrives to help them drive the U-Haul to their new home. We'll miss them, but we're glad that they'll be nearer to their family. We're not sure what this means for our home church yet, but God has a plan for everything, and I'm sure he'll work it out in time.

So, I'm going to try to get some posts done in the next few days. I have a few days off of work, but there is still lots of house to clean. We are tentatively planning to have a garage sale sometime before the end of summer. We have so much "Junk" around our house that it's ridiculous. After the flood in '10 it became VERY apparent that we had way too much stuff. Hopefully that will change soon.

While you wait to see what kinds of artwork I worked on during the last month or so of school, I'll give you one teaser picture.

This was not an art project in the traditional sense. Can you guess what it was? :)