If I wasn’t out of line this morning I probably seemed it to at least a couple people.
I was minding my own business drinking coffee in a shop and surfing some internet. I kept doing that as best I could for as long as I coud before having to interject something that may or may not have been my place to say. It was a conversation at the table next to me, between a minister and church secretary.
I won’t belabor you with all the gory details but the whole conversation was generally gossipy, judgemental, potentially slanderous and I’m sure should have been a very private discussion. But they dialogued loudly, demonstratively and either didn’t care, or perhaps wanted everyone in the tables around them to overhear.
I kept trying to tune them out but it was definitely “louder” than anything I was trying to pay attention to on my laptop. In fact, in how rude and meanspirited all the stuff was, it really was becoming more and more a “signal to noise” issue for me, so I took action.
I leaned toward the “saved” hippocrate and the woman on the other end of his power differential and after excusing myself said this:
“I’m sure I shouldn’t be hearing all that, it’s like watching sausage being made.”
Then I smiled and tried to take myself back out of their conversation immediately. But no, he struggled to engage me and tried so hard to keep me engaged saying this:
“What? Oh yes, you’re right, it’s like we’re grinding through all this.”
He quickly went back to telling her all this annoying crap I was overhearing but now even louder and MORE demonstrative.
No wonder the words pious and pompous have such a similar looking etymology!