Ariel from Apathetic Chipmunk and I are on one of our
frequent Starbucks trips, ostensibly made for the purposes of working on the
independent study papers for our study abroad program but usually spent
discussing the merits of various online magazines and nutritional strategies.
Early on in the visit, a deeply inconsiderate person settled into a chair near
ours and began braying into her cell phone. (Ariel writes about this incident
and reminds us of good coffeeshop manners here.)
My imagined response to such a person is usually along these lines: “No one cares.”
The problem is that my imagined withering response is a lie. I do care what loud
talkers are saying. I listen. Intently. And it makes me detest them. If I
didn’t care, I would tune them out. That isn’t what I do. I listen and I
dislike them irrationally. The same conversation that, overheard at a
reasonable volume, would amuse me, elicit my sympathy or make me silently happy
for someone makes me intensely malicious when it’s being screamed, especially
in a confined space.
A sampling of what I heard and the silent responses it prompted follows.
“I’m just in Starbucks in town, all alone.”
Because no one likes you.
“Well, yeah, I just got a frap.”
I hope it keeps you
awake all night, even though it isn’t even noon yet.
“Well, yeah, we went out…” and about ten minutes straight of
conversation about some young man.
It's because his eardrums haven’t healed from your last encounter. I hope you never
hear from him again. Wait, no, I hope you end up together and he’s just as loud
and annoying as you are, and you live in a very echoey house.
Just as being a horrible person was getting fun, she was joined by an equally loud friend a few moments later
and excused herself from the call by saying that this friend’s arrival made the
call rude. Her friend's arrival. Right. They proceeded to detail their
grooming habits, and the new arrival was even louder.
“Yeah, the blonde -
the blonde who works downstairs – complimented me on it. The perm, I mean.”
The blonde lied.
Her friend settled her legs on the table in front of her and
began to squawk: “Yeah, I haven’t shaved them in three days.” (My feminist body
positivity and my deep vein of inner meanness came into conflict here – guess
which won. A hint: I did not congratulate her for questioning patriarchal
beauty standards.)
May every razor you
use in the future be dull. May every
table you eat from be similarly contaminated.
Thankfully, the pair left before my ill wishing escalated.
Ariel’s response to the situation was to remind her readers to be polite in
coffeeshops. Mine is to explain why: some day, I will snap and these little
unkindnesses will be unmuted. Pray it is not in response to you.
