Today's scenario....I was riding the bus because.... (well, long story, but ANYway) and there we all were, scrunched up next to people we didn't know. You know how they dip out little individual seats, and you are only *supposed* to take up your particular dip? I think everybody there was straining not to touch anyone else's thighs with their own.
It was on the way home from one of the afternoon classes, so everyone is just staring...not at each other. When someone notices you slipped and looked at them, you have to slide your eyes like you are just scanning the opposite side of the bus. We are just a silent red tomb of zombies on wheels whizzing along...and then it began.
I don't know if she knew the girl she was talking to, or she just felt an urge to fill the empty air. The girl she was talking to didn't really look at her, and made no real response, but on she talked. Mr. Bearded Student fell asleep next to me, just snuggled into the pipe frame of the unused wheelchair restraint system.
There would be a gap in the flow, and I watched her through my sepia sunglasses (hopefully one way). She would kind of look around and for a second, her face would fall into that sort of blah expression you get when you aren't concentrating, then it would get unhappy, and then with a jolt she would turn to her unresponsive companion yet again like they were finishing up a scintillating conversation. "....so I took the picture..."
It was very surreal...like she couldn't NOT have someone to talk to, a compulsive talker; she needed to be seen talking to other people...nervous talker...I don't really know....
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