So I was sitting in Starbucks, multi-tasking like a good American – answering emails, posting a meeting for the French group I’ve started, jotting down notes in my NY-to-check-out book as I did research on line, all the time with my pad of paper beside me in case any writing ideas ran through my overly occupied brain. The two young couples at the table next to me were talking enthusiastically – the guys about their starting careers, the girls about weddings of friends. They were all animated in their speech – their voices inflecting across an operatic range with hand gestures to rival if not the Italians, at least the French. I had noted before what talkers New Yorkers are - loud, animated, excited; maybe that’s the Italian heritage in this town.
Often I am walking down the street and will catch, without effort or choice on my part, one line out of a conversation – many are mundane but others are so random I find myself concocting a story to bring context to the otherwise incomprehensible line. So, in the midst of my email and French posts and NY research and whatever else I was doing, I made a note to do an article on Strange Sentences You Hear in the Streets of New York.
All this time, a heavy set, slovenly, loud mouthed, gutter-bred man is sitting in the chair behind me talking on his cell phone, first to his fence and then to his girlfriend. I have pretty much tuned out his obnoxious listen-to-me-while-I-tell-so-n-so-not-to-tell-anyone-about-this voice. But in some synchronistic timing, my hands are hovered over the keyboard and I have looked up in thought directly at the lady sitting with her little two year old at the table next to me. She and I happen to make that momentary passing eye contact at the exact second that his voice booms, in great ferocity, BITCH, YOU JUST WANT TO PUMP YOUR HUSBAND!
She and I hold eye contact in a moment of inaudible conversation.
“He did not just say that, did he?”
“Yeah, I think he did.”
“Do you think my son heard it?”
“Well, he couldn’t help but hear it – just look like nothing happened though and hopefully he won’t remember it or repeat it to his pre-school teacher.”
“Okay, good plan.”
We broke eye contact while I said a silent thank you to self for not spitting my coffee out all over the place.
How many levels of human oddity are within the two second scream by a man to his girlfriend – you just want to pump your husband. Oh, lets not even go there….
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