Thursday, March 11, 2010

Another Reason to Take the Bus

Years ago I was sitting on the bus when a hippie chick got on. To my surprise, the woman next to me, who looked like a stereotypical librarian, said, “Hi, Charlie!” They did not look like they would have run in the same circles at all. Charlie said hi, and when the woman asked what she had been up to lately, she said she was planning to become a tiger trainer. Ms. Librarian expressed some surprise at this choice of career, but Charlie said she had a lot of experience training other animals, and this was something she had always wanted to do. She said the hardest part was getting the trucker license, because circuses wanted the trainers to drive the tigers around. I thought this was a really fascinating conversation, and several years later when I was sitting around in Paris, France with a bunch of people, the topic of weird conversations came up. I related the one about Charlie the Tiger Tamer, and one of the other girls said, “I know Charlie!” Granted, we were all from the same town, we just happened to be in Paris together, but it was still very random.

Toque McToque said that just yesterday she heard a bus conversation that is totally blog-worthy: the bus driver was asking someone who sings in a number of church choirs if he had ever played the organ, and he said he had only played the piano. Then he said, “A pure pianist would never touch an organ!” Or at least hasn’t yet, right? If that doesn’t sound absolutely filthy to you, try saying it out loud. If you’re still not getting it, then I have a squeaky-clean joke for you:

Q: What do you get when you cross a hummingbird with a doorbell?
A: A real humdinger!

Another true conversation which is not dirty but has to do with choirs:

Person A: So when that fat lady in your choir starts singing, does that mean choir practice is over?
Person B: Good one! But only if what you call what she does ‘singing.’
Person A: Ooh, that’s cold!

Famous Hat

4 comments:

Catherine Arnott Smith said...

My favorite overheard comment happened in the mid-1980s when I was an administrative assistant at the University of Michigan. I worked in a former Catholic hospital converted into university office space. Coming down into an almost empty lobby one afternoon, I saw two suits with briefcases talking to each other.

Suit One said to Suit Two: "OK. What did we do with the OTHER hypodermic needle?"

Nobody has ever been able to explain this satisfactorily to me, and I'm not sure I really want to know.

Famous Hat said...

Awesome! I can't top that.

A-Fooze said...

My favorite experience was when I was sitting on a bus and a Hungarian couple got on. They stood in front of me and started talking - I pretended not to understand them. Eventually the man started telling a joke. The joke was actually funny and I had a hard time not laughing out loud and thereby revealing that I had listened in on their entire conversation.

Famous Hat said...

Do you remember the joke? Would it be funny in English? Please feel free to share with the class.