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Browsing Tag: #shortstory
Lisa and I have this game we like to play when we’re out. All we do is try to guess the occupation of the people around us. Sometimes we even ask the ones we’re talking about if we’re not in agreement. I don’t like that part, because I understand that not everybody is approachable. Also, after so many years in a retail environment, I don’t fancy striking up a conversation with strangers. But Lisa has virtually no filter and she really likes talking to new people (and subsequently challenging them to a debate). Additionally, she likes telling people she teaches kickboxing. But anyway, it’s a fun way to pass the time and speculate. We get it right more than you would think. I’ve played a version for years in my head everywhere I go. But mine is more of a first date/ just friends/ work colleagues/ affair/ married an eternity version. Careers typically don’t enthuse me. And you know what I see the most? People sitting across the table from one another, on their phones. Completely ignoring the person they’re with. This drives me mad. Surprisingly, you don’t see as much of it at the bar. Patrons watch sports on the TVs, or they’re engaged with the people around them, strangers or not. There is a camaraderie. Blame the alcohol or praise it; I know I prefer interaction…
{#411 The story you shouldn’t have overheard on the bus} I was looking at their shoes and thinking they didn’t belong. I admit, I judge people by their footwear. I can’t help it, I profile. Forrest was right, you can tell a lot about people by looking at their shoes. Where they are headed, where they’d been. And these Christian Louboutin’s did NOT belong on a scuzzy old city bus past midnight, or any other time. You’ll find duct taped running shoes on the bus. Or polished-within-an-inch-of-their-life secondhand oxfords. Or sensible thick soled lunchlady shoes. People eking their way through life, working two jobs in order to scrape by. But never Louboutin’s. Maybe some knockoffs on a hooker, some that she’d painted the soles red to fool no one. Because the people who knew what Louboutin’s were knew they weren’t gonna find ’em on a girl painted up like a brazen hussy at two o’clock in the afternoon. But as I was saying, it wasn’t two o’clock in the afternoon. It was two in the morning and I sat very still in my muddy Redwing work boots, pretending to look at my phone but really watching a guy on the aisle two rows up on the right, silently nodding along to his iPod music. Or maybe he…
