Decorum, please...

As a writer, I love to people watch. To me there is just something fascinating about looking at people as they walk by, adrift in their own world. I wonder where they are going, who they might be meeting...a lover, a child, a friend...perhaps they're a criminal informant, hurrying to meet their handler. Or maybe...I digress. What I mean to say is, that while I love to watch people and speculate about what's going on in their lives, as soon as they start to tell the world about it, it's over. Spell broken.

I'm sitting at the bus stop the other morning, minding my own business, when a young couple with their two small children join me. I start to wonder from the backpacks if they are off on field trip of some sort or maybe to the pediatrician for check ups...my usual habit. Then she opens her mouth. And what comes out had me feeling terribly sorry for those kids and the guy.

Imaginarians, she starts going on about his performance in the bedroom the previous night and how he could not get it up. The thud I heard was the poor fellow's jaw hitting the ground along with my own. Now see, if I had just seen her gesticulating from a distance, I would have imagined some kind of argument, but the fact that I had to hear the actual words in her nasaly voice? Holy hell, I have never prayed so hard for a bus to come. Yes, I thought about walking to the next stop, but with my luck, I would be at the halfway point when the thing would have driven right past me.

I people watch, not people listen. I do not want to know their actual business. Do these people not care that they are polluting the air with their dirty laundry? I guess not. Another incident, I was at the mall, casually watching a guy in a loud suit, wondering who in God's name made that when I hear..."Tanya's motherfucking pregnant, dumb ass." Silence fell faster than Lindsey Lohan's career, all eyes zeroed in on the speaker. My head whipped over my shoulder to see two guys standing across the way, one all dressed like a gangsta rapper, the other in a KFC uniform. As if that verbal grenade weren't enough, they started to argue over who was the father, right there in the River Oaks Mall food court. Oh Tanya, whoever you are, your child is facing an uphill battle considering half it's DNA comes from Tweedle Dumb and Tweedle Dumber.

No sense of decorum at all. There must be a short in some people's brains when they get out in public. I've been on the train and been privy to cell phone conversations discussing disease progression, who slept with who, how ugly someone's new girl is, how great someone is at oral sex, etc. The list is just endless.

Dear Santa, please bring me an iPod so I don't have to listen anymore.