Overheard and overseen
May. 30th, 2009 10:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
resonantMostly just because I'm lonesome and want some company.
The White Sheep: She totally brought me into her voodoo crazy-lady world!
The White Sheep: This place is like a soap opera. The Old and the Senseless.
Me: It's a cruel world.
Kidlet: Which one?
Things you never expect to hear come out of your mouth: "Of course not. No one means for Harry Potter to wind up in the toilet."
The White Sheep: That was the year I graduated from high school.
Me: Really? Then you're ... hm ... fourteen years younger than I am.
The White Sheep: I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm really mature, though!
George Clooney: Really, who wants seventy virgins? I want eight pros.
At the coffee shop: Gas is a dollar eighty-six! We need to, like, start saving milk jugs.
At the coffee shop: I'm just really intense. I feel Italian sometimes.
The Head Monkey: He lost a ball in the sun at the opening kickoff and he ain't see it since.
(Background: Pastor Fixit has a magazine with a photo of a scantily-clad woman wearing a car as a necklace.)
The Head Monkey: You gonna get a necklace like that if you buy that car?
Pastor Fixit: No way.
The Head Monkey: Well, sometimes you want to look like a lady and not like a pastor.
Pastor Fixit (coldly): That is no lady.
Spouse: I have some papers that I need to keep safe. Where could I put them?
Me: Safe? Safe from what?
Spouse: From getting lost. From having things spilled on them. They're my parents' financial information.
Me: Oh. You want to put them in a file. There's a folder with your name on it in the file box that's on the desk in the computer room.
Spouse (shouting from upstairs): I can't open this; I don't know the code.
Me: What code? It's a cardboard box ... oh, wait, no, you've found my lockbox, which is on my dresser. The file box is on the desk.
Spouse: OK.
... time passes ...
Spouse: I'm sorry. I just can't see anything like that on your dresser.
Me: Desk. it's on the desk.
Spouse: But what is it?
Me: A great. Big. Box. Full of file folders. On the desk.
Spouse: I think it's time for me to go to bed.
Kidlet: Can I go outside and shake my skirts at the oncoming night?
Florist neighbor: Another day in the petal factory.
Ptom: My brother can be rigid and unforgiving.
Me: I've never seen that in him.
Ptom: You've never borrowed his baseball glove without permission.
Kidlet (reading OotP in the back seat): "Here it says that if you have a cold, you can't do a spell. Like you say 'Stupefy,' but it doesn't work because it comes out 'Stubefy.'"
Me: "If that's true, then Viktor Krum shouldn't be able to do magic at all, because his accent is so heavy."
Kidlet, after a brief pause for thought: "Maybe he's only using spells that were created in his native language."
-----
Pastor Fixit left at the end of April; we're pastorless right now, which is ... peaceful, actually. The spouse is on the governing board; the Head Monkey is on one of his committees; we and the White Sheep are carrying out a quiet coup in which we, like, communicate with people and plan things and stuff.
And, to add to the cast of characters, introducing the Head Monkey: Custodian and general fixing-things guy. Absolutely, totally, fiercely loyal to everybody within what he defines as his tribe; absolutely, totally, fiercely hostile to everybody outside it. Really, really extroverted; when he gets lonesome at his job, he comes and sits at my desk and chats with me, sometimes for an hour at a time. Wide variety of colorful language, much of it cringeworthily bigoted, and yet is so friendly and affectionate that it's hard not to like him just the same.
His wife of forty years once put a note in his lunch that said, "I love you" -- he read it when he came in, and at lunchtime he took it out and read it again and beamed.
Once I watched a woman (a teen mother who uses our day-care center) go from outside the tribe to inside it in one conversation: from "Them people don't take care of their cars anyway" to "I can't have my young ladies out in the parking lot in the dark with a flat tire."
The White Sheep: She totally brought me into her voodoo crazy-lady world!
The White Sheep: This place is like a soap opera. The Old and the Senseless.
Me: It's a cruel world.
Kidlet: Which one?
Things you never expect to hear come out of your mouth: "Of course not. No one means for Harry Potter to wind up in the toilet."
The White Sheep: That was the year I graduated from high school.
Me: Really? Then you're ... hm ... fourteen years younger than I am.
The White Sheep: I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm really mature, though!
George Clooney: Really, who wants seventy virgins? I want eight pros.
At the coffee shop: Gas is a dollar eighty-six! We need to, like, start saving milk jugs.
At the coffee shop: I'm just really intense. I feel Italian sometimes.
The Head Monkey: He lost a ball in the sun at the opening kickoff and he ain't see it since.
(Background: Pastor Fixit has a magazine with a photo of a scantily-clad woman wearing a car as a necklace.)
The Head Monkey: You gonna get a necklace like that if you buy that car?
Pastor Fixit: No way.
The Head Monkey: Well, sometimes you want to look like a lady and not like a pastor.
Pastor Fixit (coldly): That is no lady.
Spouse: I have some papers that I need to keep safe. Where could I put them?
Me: Safe? Safe from what?
Spouse: From getting lost. From having things spilled on them. They're my parents' financial information.
Me: Oh. You want to put them in a file. There's a folder with your name on it in the file box that's on the desk in the computer room.
Spouse (shouting from upstairs): I can't open this; I don't know the code.
Me: What code? It's a cardboard box ... oh, wait, no, you've found my lockbox, which is on my dresser. The file box is on the desk.
Spouse: OK.
... time passes ...
Spouse: I'm sorry. I just can't see anything like that on your dresser.
Me: Desk. it's on the desk.
Spouse: But what is it?
Me: A great. Big. Box. Full of file folders. On the desk.
Spouse: I think it's time for me to go to bed.
Kidlet: Can I go outside and shake my skirts at the oncoming night?
Florist neighbor: Another day in the petal factory.
Ptom: My brother can be rigid and unforgiving.
Me: I've never seen that in him.
Ptom: You've never borrowed his baseball glove without permission.
Kidlet (reading OotP in the back seat): "Here it says that if you have a cold, you can't do a spell. Like you say 'Stupefy,' but it doesn't work because it comes out 'Stubefy.'"
Me: "If that's true, then Viktor Krum shouldn't be able to do magic at all, because his accent is so heavy."
Kidlet, after a brief pause for thought: "Maybe he's only using spells that were created in his native language."
-----
Pastor Fixit left at the end of April; we're pastorless right now, which is ... peaceful, actually. The spouse is on the governing board; the Head Monkey is on one of his committees; we and the White Sheep are carrying out a quiet coup in which we, like, communicate with people and plan things and stuff.
And, to add to the cast of characters, introducing the Head Monkey: Custodian and general fixing-things guy. Absolutely, totally, fiercely loyal to everybody within what he defines as his tribe; absolutely, totally, fiercely hostile to everybody outside it. Really, really extroverted; when he gets lonesome at his job, he comes and sits at my desk and chats with me, sometimes for an hour at a time. Wide variety of colorful language, much of it cringeworthily bigoted, and yet is so friendly and affectionate that it's hard not to like him just the same.
His wife of forty years once put a note in his lunch that said, "I love you" -- he read it when he came in, and at lunchtime he took it out and read it again and beamed.
Once I watched a woman (a teen mother who uses our day-care center) go from outside the tribe to inside it in one conversation: from "Them people don't take care of their cars anyway" to "I can't have my young ladies out in the parking lot in the dark with a flat tire."