Thursday, November 16, 2006

Could you repeat that?

You know you've been friends with someone for awhile when you start to hear reruns of their favorite life stories...or sometimes you can even recite their favorite stories ("Hey 'Cole...I have a penis and you have a vagina, right??" would be one of my personal favorite friend stories - thank's 'Cole...I still get a chuckle out of that one).
But this is not my point...
Sometimes in your idle chitchat with your good friends they just slip something into the conversation...just nonchalantly, casually, and it causes you to double take. More often then not there is a diamond in the rough story behind it. Like today, my blond haired, blue eyed friend and I were chatting about travelling and she mentioned that she wanted to go to Africa and visit her "dozens of aunts and uncles." And then in the next breath she was talking about something entirely different. ...hold on, rewind, back up, explain yourself. Not just anyone has dozens of aunts and uncles, nor a single African aunt or uncle...and it's not every day that you meet someone with dozens of African aunts and uncles...and I certainly have never met a blond haired, blue eyed person with dozens of African aunts and uncles. There's story there...I could smell it.
I love my childhood friends...there is a certain comfort, a level of trust there...almost more like a sibling than a friend. But friends you make as an adult...there's always suprises, there's a whole life worth of stories. And people certainly do lead facinating lives.
One of my favorite I-have-five-minutes authors is Robert Fulghum. He wrote things like "All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten", and "Uh-Oh - Observations From Both Sides of the Refridgerator Door." But one of his more interesting books conceptually is one called "True Love." Now granted, even a romantic like me can only take this book in small doses, but if I recall correctly what he did was set himself up at a coffee shop. Stuck a sign on his table that said something to the effect of, "tell me a story about love, and I'll buy you a cup of coffee." It was a success...he amassed some amazing stories...and not just about romantic love either.
My mother laughs at me because invariably when we go shopping I wind up striking up a conversation with someone in a store. I can't help myself. People are interesting.

3 comments:

Lin-Zed said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

well, that's almost what happened, so I apologize. i had added a second comment, that was much more indigestible, but when i got home i realized that i hadn't pressed the "publish" button. given the nature of the comment, it's better that it never got sent as it is, but if it had, you'd better have posted it, beotch.

love jordumb

Lin-Zed said...

Aw, Jordan...if indigestible was the ex-factor for me, I would have ex-ed you long ago.
But this brings me to another point. Neither you nor the little woman have responded to my invitation for New Years. Not returning a message...some might find THAT indigestible.