“I’m all ears,” asserts eavesdropper Woody Weingarten. Photo: Nancy Fox.
No, of course I don’t eavesdrop on purpose.
But I do unintentionally pick up conversational crumbs during my dog-walking stints or other Ross Valley meanderings.
I’ve learned the vicinity is a veritable hotbed of amusing or thought provoking verbal tidbits. Such as the following, extracted from the pile of Post-it collectibles on my desk:
A pair of girl bicyclists rests, cross-legged, on a downtown San Anselmo sidewalk. Says one, “When I first met my boyfriend, he was feral.”
Chatting outside a Sleepy Hollow residence, a redheaded midlifer tells a male companion, “I thought Hostess was defunct, but I was wrong. Twinkies and Ho-Ho’s have new outlets. Which confirms what I’ve always believed — they have a shelf-life that ensures they, along with the cockroaches, will inherit the Earth.”
“When I see how many of my gismos, thingamajigs and appliances are breaking down, some after only 30 or 40 days,” laments a white-haired geezer to a checker in Fairfax’s Good Earth Natural Foods, “I hate to think about what’s going on in my body after 92 years.”
At the dog park behind Safeway in Red Hill, a grinning twentysomething guy rhetorically asks a chum, “Did you hear that canines here communicate via pee-mail?”
Husband in tattered shorts to overly loud wife in basic black outside Ross Post Office: “I heard what you meant.”
A blue-hair leaning on a cane at the Rino gas station in Fairfax says to a driver, “I don’t know about you but I can never rest in a restroom.”
Angry young woman to red-faced young man in Bolinas Park in Fairfax: “I am not a stand-in in your movie.”
As they both caress an assortment of nuts and bolts at Fairfax Lumber & Hardware, a young man with a nose-ring tells his girlfriend, who has both eyebrows pierced, “He got his B.S. degree in B.S.”
Succinctly, on the lawn of Town Hall in San Anselmo, a female teenager tells a gal pal, “I don’t do boredom.”
A forty-ish guy on the Kentfield campus of the College of Marin tells a younger classmate, “When anyone calls a celebrity ‘a legend,’ that means the person being referred to is old, old, old — or dead.”
At the Ross Valley Veterinary Hospital in San Anselmo, a mom asks her daughter: “When all the newspapers disappear, will puppies be trained on Kindles?”
Unsteady gray-haired guy in front of the San Anselmo’s Lincoln Park wine bar who clearly did more than taste: “My life can be measured in troublesome channels. When I was five, it was Guadalcanal. Now, it’s my alimentary canal.”
While discussing her daughter’s new boyfriend, a stylish Fairfax woman heading into 19 Broadway in Fairfax tells a companion, “My inner jury’s still out.”
Says one smiling matron to another as they window-shop at Fairfax Variety, “Having just learned that an American Headache Society exists gives me a headache.”
“She’s a magnet for desperadoes,” says one twinkle-eyed blonde in front of Andronico’s in San Anselmo to another.
A man in a 49ers’ cap says to a cop near the Parkade in Fairfax, “Oh, how quickly we forget. I wonder whatever happened to Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Sperminator.”
Couplet overheard at the hub bus stop in San Anselmo: “Greeting cards are getting expensive.” “Yeah, but now they talk, sing and do your laundry.”
A redhead sips a latte in San Anselmo’s Marin Coffee Roasters and gripes, after her second date with the new man in her life, “I have yet to find his sense of humor or personality.”
An acne-ridden teen boy, licking a spoon in front of Gelato on San Anselmo Avenue: “I believe in stating the obvious — because most people overlook it.”
“I’m 87 years old and still very much a work in progress,” says a woman to her companion in Fairfax’s Siam Lotus.
In the doorway of the Sunshine Bicycle Center in Fairfax, a youth whispers to himself, “She’s somewhere between perfect and oh, my God.”
A housefrau enters Seawood Photo in San Anselmo telling one friend about another: “He lives partly in Manhattan, partly in Florida, and wholly in yesterday.”
Drake High School student describes a verbose acquaintance thusly: “He’s a wordaholic.”
And here’s my personal favorite:
A bald philosopher-king outside MC23 Salon in Ross says, “My recommendation for a bumper sticker is: ‘Life is not a bumper sticker.’”
You can contact Woody Weingarten @voodee@sbcglobal.net.
