Something to Talk About

We left Oregon for a few days for the sole purpose of being excited to come home.  Washington is a half an hour from our front door so we splurged and went all the way to Seattle.  We took the train; we were too lazy even to drive.

We got out of our rut and out of Oregon and I have to admit it was nice to get back on the train and head south.  We were assigned a booth.  These are the four seats facing each other at the end of the car with a table in the middle.  We always get a booth.  It’s like a three hour ride in a restaurant.

I figured we always got the booth because we always travel with flirty teenaged girls.  This time we left them home and we still were assigned the booth.  Looking around the rest of the car, I figured out why.  We were the only ones within forty feet who could fit between the table and the seat.  It’s a tight fit and a good way to keep kids caged, if you need to do so.

Kids with families are usually assigned the other booth across the aisle.  Last time we were on this train, the General and her friends were assigned the opposite booth.  Caging them was the last thing I wanted to do.  They weren’t exactly quiet.

This time an elderly woman walked by, dropped a few magazines on the table and unloaded her huge shopping bags in the luggage area by the door.   Her husband followed, carrying several flowery suitcases behind her.  He took his time, I noticed, trying to squish the luggage around his wife’s shopping bags.  She’d already sat down and started reading her magazines by the time he finished.

When the husband did sit down, I noticed he didn’t bring anything to read.  Instead, he seemed happy to stare out the window.

 “This right here, this pot is like they use in Africa,” the wife said, not looking up.  “You put the chicken in then put the top on.  You put it in the oven.”

The man didn’t look toward her and she didn’t look toward him.  He kept staring without saying a word.  She turned the page and began to read out loud the description of every pot or pan on the page.  She must be looking at a kitchen store catalog because there wasn’t much in the way of a plot discussion.

She did this for way too long, maybe an hour.  Her husband, I noticed, had leaned his head back and had his eyes closed.  After a while, the wife stopped talking and I noticed also leaned her head back.  Anyone over a certain age, sitting in this position, is going to snore.  It’s inevitable. 

By this time, they weren’t the only ones in this car snoring.  Charlie and I were the youngest people in this car unless you count a wannabe car seven couple.  These particular people were pretty young and maybe that’s why they couldn’t find their seat even after the train started moving.  The woman had dyed bright red hair and didn’t seem to want to use her lips when she spoke.  The soft-looking punk guy she was with wore lots of dirty leather and a very big Mohawk and would have scared the old people on this car had he not been so overweight.  Even the oldest passengers would be able to outrun this couple.  Eventually they stopped trying to harass someone’s grandparents and moved on to car six, where they belonged.  Now we were the only ones not collecting social security in this particular car.

Soon, the woman in the booth across from us woke up and started talking again.  She didn’t have the catalog in front of her so she looked directly at her husband, who had his eyes open but didn’t really look engaged.

“Cream cheese,” she said.  “It comes in a box.”  Her husband still stared toward the ceiling, saying nothing.  “In a box,” she repeated.  She held her hands out about a foot apart gesturing the shape of a box.

“Cream cheese in a box, I said.  Are you listening to me?”

Charlie started laughing.  He pretended he was laughing at the book in front of him, but I knew better.  “Maybe if she wasn’t so boring, he’d be listening,” he whispered.  “He looks depressed.”

I thought about this for the rest of the ride.  When my Dad took early retirement, he drove my Mom crazy.  My Mom had the same life she had before my Dad followed her around but my Dad had nothing to do.  He decided it was time he took over all the things my Mom did for thirty years, like laundry.  My Mom soon developed issues with his laundry capability and left him soon after.  My Dad still believes he’s divorced because he mixed whites with colors.  Thirty years of marriage down the drain because of some now-pink shirts.  You can’t tell him otherwise.    

I wondered if this man had recently retired.  Now, instead of thinking and talking about whatever work he once did, he’s being made to think about pots and pans and cream cheese in a box.  I suspect this woman had been having these conversations for a long, long time.  She was good at making conversation about catalog contents.  That doesn’t just happen overnight.

Right then I promised myself I’d never have so little to talk about that I’d start a conversation about pots and pans.  I’m already on a good start: I don’t have a kitchen.  It’s good to have a life and hobbies; things to talk about, especially with your spouse.  By the time you’re retired, you have had so many conversations it must be hard to keep thinking up new things to talk about.  That may be why, toward the end of their lives, my grandparents conversation with each other consisted of details about bodily functions.  That’s one thing which is new every day.

The Vegan picked us up and drove us home.  This in itself gave us plenty to talk about.  We were grateful to be alive.  He drives with the belief that it’s a greater sin to slow people behind you than it is to speed way over the limit.  “You know, Dylan,” I said, “there is no penalty for going under the speed limit.  You can’t say that about going over.”

“Going under the speed limit bothers the people behind you,” he said.  “I don’t want to slow them down.”

“They’ll like you even more when you’re the one who gets the speeding ticket.”

The General runs up to the Vegan, even before we’ve shut the front door. “I’ve got so much dirt on you,” she says.  “Just a hint: don’t leave the house in the middle of a chat room conversation.  I wasn’t even being nosey.  I was planning to do homework but you left everything right there out in the open.  At least I know you’re heterosexual now, that’s for sure.  Awkward.”

The Vegan didn’t seem worried.

“I’m hungry,” she said.  “You’d better get me Taco Bell or I’m telling.”

He went to his room.

“I’m serious,” she said.  “I have so much dirt on you.”

He shut his door.

“Did you know he has an Asian girlfriend?” she told us.  “She’s obsessed with him.  She emailed him a picture of her holding up a sign saying, ‘I love you, Dylan!’  I can’t even repeat the other things she wrote.  Not the stuff you want to know about your brother.”

“What school does she go to?” I asked.

“Enough about him,” she said.  “Back to me.  The Winter Formal is this weekend and I think I’m getting asked tomorrow.  If I get asked, all my friends are going together and therefore I need a spray-on tan.  The guy who might ask me is dark.  Nicci just got sprayed.  The guy she’s going with just got back from Hawaii and tanned.  Jessi keeps the tanning place in business and Shephard is so tall you couldn’t tell if he’s tanned or not so it doesn’t matter.  I need to get a new dress, too.”

She walks upstairs while finishing up her demands and bumps her head on the ladder.  The ladder has been leaning in the middle of the stairs for about a month, waiting for the Vegan to get excited about painting the tall part of the entryway.

“Is this normal?” she says.  “Who has a ladder on their stairs for a month?  We have, like, a hundred years of bad luck already.”

She stomps upstairs and shuts her door.

I believe it’ll be a long time before Charlie and I have conversations about cream cheese in a box.

A little help? [] 9:19:15 PM