The Best of Both Worlds

I know the title of this post sounds a little like a 1980s sitcom about a kid whose parents are divorced and while the mum is all about being a no rules hippy who lets her kids stay up as late as they like but makes them eat scrambled tofu for breakfast, the dad is very rich and lives in a mansion full of wide screen TVs and remote control gadgets but is very strict about homework and bedtimes.

I’m sure you’re all completely flabbergasted to discover that that is not, in fact, what the title of this post is referring to. I have another story about Dullard Cheese Girl, but I didn’t have to suffer through beigeville myself to obtain it, because I heard it from someone else. So here we go: Apparently it is more boring to catch a bus with her than to watch the bread go stale through a shop window. Poor AB got stuck with her last night and it seems DCG’s idea of sparkling co-worker public transport conversation is to relay the exact address and distance from home of every fast food outlet in the suburb where she used to live.

This litany was made all the more excruciating by the fact that DCG doesn’t make eye contact when she talks, and doesn’t talk very loudly either, so AB was forced to lean in and make an effort to hear a whole lot of crap that she didn’t actually want to hear in the first place. Maybe overt and direct rudeness has more of a place in the world than our parents have led us to believe. AB, I would like to suggest that next time you just stick your headphones on and pretend to be socially unaware but I know from experience that this is easier said than done. Somehow, it’s like DCG is a big 4wd, her boringness is the 2 huge headlights at the front, and you are the poor little rabbit stunned into mute and compliant inertia. I'm sure we've all been there at some time or another.