Mostly elevators are spaces where conversation ceases. In very tall buildings though where you can be in them for several minutes no such rules apply, as I discovered as I descended slowly from work one Friday night with an elderly couple who's weekend planning had gone awry.
Woman: (coyly)"How would you feel about…"
Man: (sensing danger)"C'mon, I'm holding my breath here."
Woman: "Andy coming to the house on Saturday?"
Man: "Andy who?"
Woman: "Andy, you know Andy. He just turned 65 and I haven't even acknowledged it."
Man: (scowling) "What do you mean' acknowledged it?' Who is this guy?"
Woman: "I mean I didn't even send him a card or call him up. I have to do something."
Man: (looking at the ceiling of the elevator as though it were the sky) "Well the weather doesn't look very congenial."
Woman: "He won't care about the weather. He's a very outdoors person."
Man :"Who is he again?"
Woman: (angry now sensing subterfuge) "Andy! My friend with the horses."
Man : "What horses?"
Woman "He used to run the polo stables in Uruguay, now he lives here."
Man: "Andy! Christ, he drinks, right?"
Woman: "He's an expert on wine."
Man: "He can come."
Woman: "I didn't say he was going to bring wine."
Man: "He can bring what he wants, I'm not going to be around."
Woman: "Where are you going?"
Man "There's a thing at the university."
Woman "Maybe we can all come?"
Man (staring hard at his reflection in the polished door) "Maybe."
The temptation to draw a 'Sting' prophylactic was very strong with this one!
I was having a haircut, feeling quite pleased that fortune had provided me with a barber who wasn’t inclined towards small talk when the customer in the next chair suddenly emerged from a hot towel treatment with all kinds of things he wanted to say.
Customer: (nodding towards the radio) “This is The Police, innit?”
Barber: “It is.”
Customer: “Roxanne?”
Barber: “Yup.”
Customer: “Don’t talk to me about this record!”
Barber: (declining to point out that he hadn’t been) “Oh?”
Customer: (animated by his sense of the imminent anecdote’s hilarity) “Fella at work, right? He’s made this Doris on a park bench, at lunch time, and he’s started going out on like, dates with her!”
Barber: Yeah?
Customer: “She called Roxanne! Or that’s what she told him anyway. So to wind him up we start playing this record-Roxanne-over and over again in the office. I tell you, by the end of it he was going nuts. Almost crying he was.”
Barber “Right”
Customer: (changing subject effortlessly) “You ever been to Muay Thai?”
Barber: “No. What is it?”
Customer: The old Thai boxing innit.”
Barber: “Right.”
Customer: “Blood all over the shop.”
Barber: “I’m gonna put another towel over you, ok?”
And like a caged bird, that proved sufficient to silence him.
Whoops! Managed to scoop myself by publishing this weeks article with last week's image last week (if that makes sense!?!?!) - here's the article again with the correct image!
Of the many things to admire about New York City its inhabitant's uninhibited facility for loud public conversations naturally falls near the top of my list. The simplest excursion will likely lead you though the edges of endless dramas. Why anybody watches television here is beyond me. I was eating breakfast when the people across from me launched into a complex business/wildlife analogy. Man 1: "It's a tough organization, there are sharks on the bottom, and Huck is like a great white-he'll eat a rubber tire, and he'll keep coming at you- not so smart but he'll do anything." Man 2: "Edna's like the good shark. The other man pulled a face that said "What do you mean by 'good shark?'" Man 2: (Trying to bail out) "I mean, the kind of shark that, you know…not like a great white, the one that floats around. Helping people…" Man 1: (Frowning and laughing) "What kind of animal, is this? Where did you hear about it?" Man 2: "You know, I mean she's good, Edna." Waitress (pouring coffee) "You want more coffee?" Man 2 "What's that, a rhetorical question?" Waitress: "Ooh, 'rhetorical question.' I'm impressed.' Man 1: "You should be, he's trying to impress you." Man 2: (staring into some form of hand held device and considering his professional existence) "You know I won't even take my blackberry home with me." Man 1: "You've drawn a line in the sand." Man 2 " I'm saying, 'this is where it stops.'"
Man 1 (looking past his friend toward the waitress)"I have so much admiration for that."
I love those pictures of really enthusiastic animals who are about to be eaten - there's something extremely disturbing & wrong about that 'pig butcher' on the pork scratchings packet