Monday, January 12, 2009

Is it awful that the first thing I thought while overhearing the following conversation in a deli was, 'Sweet, even less sensitive people than me exist in the world!'?

We were sitting with our backs to the three guys at the counter, eating an Italian sub and a hot pastrami, drinking the first gross Izzes I've ever tried (clementine? more like watered-down fizzy orangeade) and we were talking, but after their first sentence we immediately stopped as if struck.

Guy #1: Hey, have you seen xxxxx's girlfriend?
Guy #2: I know, she must have gained like 30 pounds!
Guy #1: I know dude, I thought you're supposed to lose weight when you have cancer!
Guy #2: Well, the thing is, she's only taking like half the meds the doctor prescribed.
Guy #1: That's bad.
Guy #2: Also, she's still drinking.
Guy #3: Seriously? When I saw her I thought she was pregnant.
Guy #1: No.
Guy #2: I guess xxxxx was afraid she was pregnant.
Guy #1: Babies don't weigh 30 pounds.
Guy #2: Tumors weigh 30 pounds?
Guy #1: It's bad, they tried to stop drinking and they didn't even last, like, twelve hours. She called him, and she was supposed to be doing work stuff. She said she was at the library when she called. But like, you could hear drunk people yelling behind her and shit.
Guy #3: You know how loud and rowdy people get at the library!
Guy #1: I know. So he was super pissed when he got off the phone. He was like, let's get some shots. Let's get some tequila. He was like, want a shot? And I was like, hell yeah.

There are many gems (anti-gems? yes, anti-gems) about this conversation, such as the most important thing about a girl being her weight, regardless of cancer-having status; pregnancy being a worse fate than a giant tumor; and a guy's reaction to his cancerous girlfriend's drinking problem being to get pissed at her and then do shots of tequila.

Does a conversation need that amount of assholery to exceed my normal level of assholery? Does the fact that I even thought a good thought (I'm out-assholed by these guys!) during such an assholish conversation make me by default at least a moderately large asshole myself?

3 comments:

Dan Reynolds said...

I think it was

"Hey, have you seen xxxx's girlfriend?"
"Yeah dude."
"How's she doin'?"
"Really bad, like she must've gained like 30 pounds."
"What? I thought you were supposed to lose weight when you have cancer!"
"Hah, I know! The thing is, she's only taking like half the meds she's supposed to..."
"That's bad"
"...and she's still drinking."
and so on...


Beats the hell out of the conversation I heard about the pseudo hippie Naropa girls discussing the finer points of manufacturing your own muenstral pad because tampons are apparently not environmental.

Hannah Enenbach said...

Is a muenstral pad sort of like muenster cheese? :P

Anonymous said...

"I'm out-assholed by these guys!" has been copied and pasted. Too good.