Waiting room

While at the library this morning, I met a gentle man in the waiting area. As it turned out I was early, so this is what transpired over the 45 loong minutes of waiting.

As soon as I sat he asked how I was doing.
He was probably in his early 50’s or late 40’s; certainly could have passed for a CEO or manager of some company or the other.
Then like he had been waiting for me, he spoke passionately about how he had applied for some job, was turned down and now he was upset that the ad was in the papers.
“I just want to leave this place, can’t wait to get over with this court case and I will be out of here.”
Pause.
“I will probably go back to Albuquerque, the people there are a lot nicer, don’t know why I came here in the first place, no one wants to hire me.
I can’t wait for the court case to be over”.

I was amazed at how the guy decided to unleash on me, but I understood there was a bit of frustration.
So I decided to play the shriek, “What happened? What is the court case about?”
He says “oh, it’s along story, but basically I got kicked in the face, put at gun point, dragged to the ground…”
Too much detail.

He goes on to say “Life is pretty rough”, at this point I see tears in his eyes and I’m thinking “oh my! What am I going to do with a crying man?” things are really bad.
He started coughing, pulled out a hankie and blew his nose.
Turns out he had flu or rather his sinuses were acting up due to the weather, phew!
That was a relief.
At that juncture another guy walked in and they struck up a conversation, phew!
More relief.
Never met a more talkative mzungu.

So he asks the guy who just walked in if he had found something to do.
Guy says “yeah, got something with wal-mart”.
Talkative guy says “that is really neat, I love wal-mart, they pay good. What are you going to do there?”
Guy says “I don’t know, stuck up boxes or something, anything really”
Talkative guy says “That’s really nice, you are lucky man”.
I get out a book to read, hoping I can drown out their voices.

Talkative guy says “I wish I could turn back time, I never would have worked for O’reileys”, he said this like three times.
My book-reading wasn’t working.
I decided to get out a pen and paper and scribble some stuff down.

Then he asks the other guy if he is on food stamps, guy says no.
Asks him if he has a girlfriend, guy says yes, at this point I’m wondering where he is going with this?. Well, your guess is as good as mine, no where really.
Then silence.

Talkative guy begins to recite the alphabet, I’m thinking, “you have got to be kidding me”.
Out of the blue he mentions how his 94 year old grandma passed away two weeks ago.
He says “I don’t know if there is life after death but if there is, she sure must be happy. I bet she will meet up with old friends”.
Then mentions how he is getting 2 new pairs of jeans real soon, adding up to a total of 5.

Sports channel was showing basket ball.
Talkative guy mentions how there was this guy in school who was 6’10 but he never played the game. “I mean he could touch the back board with his big hands without straining”.
“We asked him why he didn’t play, because that sure puzzled us”.
“Turns out that he was gay”.
Boy oh boy! Did that crack me up or what?!

At some point I got lost in my own thoughts, when I got back he was talking about C-sections and how both his wives had them.
Finally the librarian came to our rescue by opening the doors.

In all of 45 minutes I knew this guys life history.
I concluded that Mark Twain's novels like "The adventures of Huckleberry Fin" and Tom Sawyer are not all lies, there are some people who fit the profile.