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The "Conversations You've Overheard" Thread


jeepster

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So I was on the train coming home the other day, and it was pretty packed being the Sunday before Columbus day and all, so naturally, I was in close proximity to a bunch of others. So I sit down in one of those 5-seater's that you find on Metro-North trains, and the train quickly fills up. A pretty tough looking black dude sits down next to me, more people continue to file in, then a 15-year old punky tom-boy sits down across from me, more people continue to board the train, then finally an ancient woman dodders in and sits down in the 3rd seat on the 3 seat side. So now its, her, the tough, and myself facing this tom-boy who's already plugged into her iPod for the trip.

The train lurches to life and we're on our way. As we leave the underground portion Grand Central, the tough takes out his phone and gives someone a call. He then proceeds to tell the story of how some dude was being a major bitch and pulled a gun on him at a party and how eventually, this dude followed up by pulling a gun on him at a later date, pistol-whipped him, and messed up his house. Now he's on his way out of the state to his auntie's cause the other dude called the cops on the guy. So he seems to just be a street-tough who's heading out of town to wait till the heat dies down. Word.

This conversation goes on for about fifteen-twenty minutes. In this time, the tom-boy has also called her mother about visiting a girlfriend and gotten into a fight with her, albeit quietly, about what time she should be home for dinner that night. That was during the ghetto dudes conversation, so I missed out on the key highlights other than that.

Then, about twenty-thirty minutes later, after becoming increasingly board with Tetris and Pacman, the street dude starts messing around with streaming audio and decides on "A Millie". He's jammin out next to me, and the old lady on the end hears the song and gets really taken aback by the curses and she asks him to turn it off. He starts laughin and apologizing and acting like it was nothing, and then the lady launches into how she can't stand rap music but she absolutely loves reggae and tells a story about how she saw Bob Marley in 1978 and was "transported", yaddayaddayadda. The dude is now listening with much intent and asks her if she smoked pot and she goes on some tangent about how at the time, pot was so harmless and drugs were so much more fun. She then asks me if I remember when you could smoke on trains, to which I respond, yes, but I was a much younger, so it didn't really phase me. She gives me a scoffed look as if I'm some square while this old hag is going on about how reggae is so superior to rap music and not realizing how utterly unintentionally racist she sounds by going on this extended riff on black music and how its become corrupt. I could tell the dude picked up on the same thing, but was just playing along because she wasn't shutting up.

Eventually her stop came up, then mine.

Ever have these situations where you just fall into other peoples conversations?

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