Conversations
Aug. 26th, 2008 07:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
porphyry1. Mme. Malkhos generally makes espresso in the afternoon in a little coffee pot that she originally bought in Italy and replaces periodically via the miracle of the internet. The other day, however, we had eaten out and it had grown late, so we decided to stop at the drive through at Starbucks. Mme. Malkhos orders cappuccino for me. We hear back from the speaker, “Are you sure? Do you know what that is? It's hot coffee with a lot of foam on top. You don’t want to burn yourself.”
I think if I had been driving I just would have pulled out of line and driven off, though our more patient half persevered in line. But upon reflection I don’t think he was insulting us, implying that we were the kind of bumpkins who had just fallen off the hay wain on our first trip into the big city of Collinsville. Rather it must have been projection. He must have been the kind of bumpkin who had just learned what cappuccino is for the first time and found the information so amazing and contrary to expectation that he couldn’t believe anyone else would know it. In my infrequent visits there before, I have been met with blank stares upon trying to order an Italian soda and actually had to get something else.
2. Having Madeline at the park today, a grandmother there improved upon the habit of talking incessantly on the cell-phone. She set hers to speaker phone so I could hear both halves of the conversation. After consoling her interlocutor on her husband’s infidelity ("He don’t deserve no trust!”), they discussed a mutual acquaintance who was named Juliette; not an uncommon name, I suppose, but this Juliette had a daughter, 7, who already back-talks and was prophesied for an unpleasant puberty. The girl’s name was Justine. I suppose the name was chosen to alliterate with the mother’s rather than to make a literary reference.
I think if I had been driving I just would have pulled out of line and driven off, though our more patient half persevered in line. But upon reflection I don’t think he was insulting us, implying that we were the kind of bumpkins who had just fallen off the hay wain on our first trip into the big city of Collinsville. Rather it must have been projection. He must have been the kind of bumpkin who had just learned what cappuccino is for the first time and found the information so amazing and contrary to expectation that he couldn’t believe anyone else would know it. In my infrequent visits there before, I have been met with blank stares upon trying to order an Italian soda and actually had to get something else.
2. Having Madeline at the park today, a grandmother there improved upon the habit of talking incessantly on the cell-phone. She set hers to speaker phone so I could hear both halves of the conversation. After consoling her interlocutor on her husband’s infidelity ("He don’t deserve no trust!”), they discussed a mutual acquaintance who was named Juliette; not an uncommon name, I suppose, but this Juliette had a daughter, 7, who already back-talks and was prophesied for an unpleasant puberty. The girl’s name was Justine. I suppose the name was chosen to alliterate with the mother’s rather than to make a literary reference.
