Thursday, August 16, 2007

Eavesdropping on The Meaning of Life on a Zebra Crossing


Overheard in Girls Toilet, originally uploaded by Heidi B.

As I was walking back from a particularly strange Salsa class tonight (I was re-doing beginners level, and nobody showed up except for this guy I feel terrible embarrased dancing with, because he looks waaaaay too interested in me! And to top it all off, he insisted on accompanying me for way too much of the way until I finally managed to point him to where his bus stop was; darn it! I missed my chance of window shopping at Holt Renfrew when I can have it all for myself! - more about this ordeal at a later time, perhaps) - Anyways, I was just crossing a zebra crossing (a particularly long one), as I heard the most unlikely chain of words come out of a male mouth: "do you ever think about what's the meaning of life?". I was so astonished I had to turn back almost immediately to see which lips the words came from. Somehow, I managed to hold myself back from responding, as I realized I just landed on a treasure that can be most accurately defined as ear candy and food for the voyeristic soul.

The mouth belonged to a young college boy I assume. He was with a friend just his age. There was nothing out of ordinary about them except that they were having a soul-to-soul talk in the middle of the intersection. I thought this was just a one-time successful line (and probably a cynical one) ended up being a soul-to-soul conversation between two young men that I would have never heard on the street before. They kept wondering on and on and actually were listening to each other. I mean, don't we always think that men don't listen?
Well, I guess these two college boys were just every woman's dream of a listener... I'm going to try to recall the conversation before I completely erase it from my cerebral tape recorder, I think it went somewhat like this:

Existentialist: "Do you ever think about what the meaning of life? I mean, do you ever just wonder why we are alive anyways?"

Friend (listens, you can hear it): "Yeah... Sometimes"

Existentialist: "Well, you know, sometimes I get this existentialist (wow! he knows what he's thinking about!) feeling that there is just no meaning for anything"

Friend: "I felt like this when I was studying really hard for my exams. And than I was sitting in the exam room thinking just this. But after the exam ended and I started having fun again I forgot all about it".

Existentialist: "I was trying to imagine what would have happened if I was rich. Would I be happy than? I don't think so!"

Friend: "I would be definitely be happy if I were rich!"

Existentialist: "I might be content. But I wouldn't be happy. Or have more meaning to my life just because I have lots of money".

(me thinks I should so eavesdrop on this conversation! They seem so busy I think I can do it in a completely uncunny way: I'm going to follow them from upfront! And so I decided to just pretend I'm just another girl in front of them and made sure I'm at the same pace, stopping only occasionally to pretend to be distracted by stuff that ordinary girls that never listen to college boys conversations do; I kind of missed a few lines this way, but I got a lot of this conversation, believe me; I think I missed something about meaning of life leading to relationships somehow so I'm not going to fake that missing link in the conversation).


F: "So what about that girl of yours? How is that going?"
E: "Well, she is just so much higher than me, like, I'm on the first floor and she's on the eighteenth floor. All she thinks about all the time is what shoes to wear..."
(well, that sounds just like me! I think to myself; this guy must be sarcastic; he must be trying to say that she is just shallow and materialistic and is only interested in fashion and her looks; well, apparently I was wrong)
E: "She always needs to make sure that she's not going to look taller than me. She is really worried because I guess I am just a little bit taller than her or just about the same height. She always wears flat shoes!"
F: "She should just find a guy that is way taller than her than!"
Precisely. And let me hang out with these two college boys. I never knew existentialist innocence can be so sexy.

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