Overheard Conversation

I took the bus after class today in search of a good place to eavesdrop on people.  I decided to try my luck at Fred Meyer East in the deli area.  I arrived there at around noon which ended up being the perfect time, because alot of people stop there to eat lunch.  I found myself a table after getting some baked chicken and Jo Jo's and got out my note pad trying not to look too inconspicuous.

It wasn't long and three guys came and sat down at the table diagonal from mine and one said "I am going to have to shovel my roof off with all this snow we got this week!"  The next guy said "Yeah, I was thinking the same thing."  The third guy said, "Well I was up on my roof shoveling snow and the shingles are so old that my feet couldn't get traction so they just went out from under me and I slid off the roof..... My room mate came out and said, "did you just fall off the roof man?"  "No I jumped."  The first guy says, I wonder if my insurance would cover if my roof caved in?"

This is how it could be taken, Three friends go out to lunch to discuss how they are going to collect on a big insurance settlement.  They are using "shoveling the roof" as a cover up.  Everyone that is listening to them thinks they are talking about shoveling snow,  but that is a cover for what they really have planned.

Context can be easily misconstrued.  It reminds me of "Three's Company" Mr. Furley was always eavesdropping on Jack, and what was an innocent conversation got totally blown out of proportion.  It is very important to be clear in what you write.

Salvation?

Hughes story really makes me think about how vulnerable we are as childeren.  I remember my view of God was that he was a God to fear and that if you did anything bad then he would punish you.  How he must have felt so alone with his secret crying under the quilts and his grandmother thinking that he was crying because the Holy Ghost had come into his life, when it was that he didn't want to disappoint her by saying that he had lied and decieved everyone in the church.

Hughes expresses alot of emotion in this writing and description.  You can feel the anticipation as they sit there waiting for this wonderful thing to happen in the hot, crowded church.  The way he describes the sermon, and all the moans and shouts. 

Hughes began this essay with bland scentences without any emotion then speeds up the cressendo all through the essay to where you feel like you are sitting in the hot church right next to him.  He ends the essay the same way he began, bland and bland with no emotion.  Matter of fact.

I kind of felt like it left me hanging, wanting more.  I wanted to know if his faith got restored when he got older.

I wonder if why he named this "Salvation?"  Maybe it was since Jesus didn't come to help him, he desided he didn't believe anymore and that in itself is his own salvation. 

 

Me Talk Pretty One Day

The reading, “Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris, was a story I can relate to, because I am a 41 year old going back to school.

What I got out of this story is going back to school late in life can be very intimidating.   Almost like learning a foreign language. 

Walking into class and you feel like all eyes are on you and everyone seems to carry themselves with ease and confidence.  That is very intimidating.  Makes you feel like Pa Kettle as Sedaris says, with everyone dressed in the latest styles young and attractive.   In my case, Ma Kettle.   I wonder how many even know who Ma and Pa Kettle are?

You can sense the hostility of the teacher and how she is speaking to the students when she asks them to state their names, nationalities, and occupations, and a brief list of things they liked and disliked and it soon becomes apparent to me that any answer would be the wrong answer.  I know how I feel on the first day, worried that I am going to say something stupid, or sound “old.”

I liked Sedaris’s questions, How often is one asked what he loves in this world?  Then publicly ridiculed for the answer?  He then recalls his mom flushed with wine yelling out all that she loved and him and his sisters waiting….I think to hear her say their names instead she says “Tums.”

I feel that Sedaris was waiting all his life for approval and recognition and wanting to belong somewhere and probably searching for the words of love his mother could not give him.  No matter what the teacher said to him he still pressed on spending hours every night studying. He did take comfort in the fact that his fellow students felt the same.  I think in the same sense he was always searching for his mother’s approval and never got it.  I think that the teacher and mother have a connection in the story.  Even in the end when Sedaris realizes that he has understood what the teacher was saying even though it was negative.  He has a feeling of euphoria just from knowing that he understood every word she was saying.

I think the understanding he talks about is the understanding of himself.

I really liked this reading.  I ended up reading it over and over, and each time I did I found more hidden meaning to it.  Like the part Understanding doesn’t mean that you can suddenly speak the language.  Far from it.  It’s a small step, nothing more, yet its rewards are intoxicating and deceptive.