Eves Dropping has Never been so Dangerous

I've overheard some strange and disturbing conversations during the last ten minutes. The first came after I had received my evening coffee from the short barista at the Barnes and Noble. He looks like Kim Jong Il, and I had to beg his pardon when he asked me if I was a member.

As I stood there waiting for my coffee, I noticed a large circle of women who had rearranged the entire south side of the cafe to accommodate their posse. One of them, pudgy and bespectacled, was crafting what appeared to be either a knit cap or an oven mitt. Yellow yarn was coiled on the floor beside her thick calf. When my coffee was ready, I wandered over to the table that housed the cream and sweeteners. As much as I tried to mind my own business, I couldn't help overhearing the woman talk about a recent encounter she'd had with one of her teachers.

"He made me dress up in my nicest business clothes to meet with him," she said. I tuned her out for a minute after that, thinking that this group of gossip-mongers reminded me of a group of women who used to meet at the coffee shop where my sister worked in Los Angeles. They called their meetings Stitch 'n Bitch. Then she said something that caught my attention:

"I have a pair of purple sparkly fishnets," she said. Before I could block it from entering my mind, an image of her wearing them, holding a ball of yarn, was burned into my consciousness.

I finished stirring my coffee as quickly as possible, and sat down beside a couple of teenagers, who appeared harmless. I opened Word, and started to scan through what I'd written yesterday. Then the boy beside me started talking:

"Let me thee. I can't find it. Well anyway, it theth in here thomewhere that there will be a bunch of earthquaketh." Were it not for his lisp, I might have been a little more frightened by the apocalypse talk. He was trying to explain the book of Revelation to his little girlfriend. I thought of asking him if he'd ever considered seeing a speech therapist, but then decided I liked him better with a lisp. Besides, they seemed to really be hitting it off, and I didn't want to interfere with true love. I moved on, relocating to my beloved spot in the corner by the trashcan.

Now I'm listening to horrible muzak and wondering how many times I can hear Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" played by an orchestra before my eardrums start bleeding. Sometimes I think the whole world has gone crazy.