Close Encounters Of The Worst Kind

I was at the laundromat when a woman sat down at the counter across from me. I was reading Sanctuary by Faulkner, yes I'm trying another one of his books, she was reading the editorials and interrupted me to point out a political cartoon. I thought this was a little bit of a strange thing to do with a stranger, but I politely looked at it and smiled. It was okay. She then tried to start a conversation with two women doing laundry across from us and when they left soon after, she turned back to me. I thought, okay she is lonely. I can read Faulkner later.

Big mistake.

What seemed like a play for attention started out talking about our children. Nothing wrong with that. In fact her oldest daughter was about the age of my daughter, but she still had two at home and one who was a freshman on full scholarship at a very strict Christian college. I was sucked in and before I quite understood what was happening realized we were engaged in a very subtle game of one upmanship. I honestly wasn't even aware of it at first then I noticed this uncomfortable feeling of wanting to impress her. I asked myself why?

She told me how perfect her daughter was, good grades, great athlete in several sports, full scholarship to this perfect college, and never even thought about sex or dating, but, well, she had a messy room at home. That was it! The admission of a minor fault in order to impress me with how impossibly perfect this child was. Since I could see where it was going I tried to hold back. My kids are grown. I'm through. Whatever they do now is up to them and I am completely happy with where they are. Some of that is my influence, but a lot of it is their own hard work and I don't get any credit for it at all. I just mentioned my children were all grown and out of the house.

She went on to to tell me how they adopted their son from her sister and how he was only going to junior college and might have to work a little harder, but then he was adopted. That kind of blew it. I jumped in with both feet and buried myself. I said two of my children were adopted and one was a lawyer. She immediately said her older daughter was a lawyer. I said that was great, but I wasn't feeling good, I was still feeling very annoyed, so I fell hook, line and sinker into her trap and said mine was a public defender who opted to become a stay at home dad with his new baby. She countered with her daughter, who could have become a trial attorney, in fact was at the top of her class and probably should have, but she didn't want to spend her life setting criminals free!

It was about this point in the conversation when I realized what was going on and opted out, but not before one attempt at reason. I said not all people charged with a crime are guilty, that our whole system is predicated on the idea that we are innocent until proven guilty and didn't she think people needed attornies for that? Of course not, she said, most people are guilty, or they wouldn't even be suspect.

What did I expect?

Before I committed the crime of throttling a middle aged housewife in a laundromat and ended up needing a lawyer myself I backed up and simply asked how old were the other children. She began going on and on about them and the fact that one was a wrestler, working out as we spoke in order to lower his weight a half pound before the match coming up. He walked in somewhere in the middle of her discussing him and she went on to tell me about a girl who wrestled on his team and who embarrassed the boys and even undressed in the locker room. I wanted to say that it took a lot of guts for a girl to undress in a boy's locker room, but the kid was turning six shades of red as him mother talked about how the girl seeing him stark naked because he forgot she was there. Of course I really do realize how difficult it can be to have a girl on a wrestling team, especially when the kids are 14 and 15 years old and why anyone expected them to share the locker room is beyond me, but I had the good sense, and really a lack of opportunity to even talk about that, because she was off talking about other personal things as if the boy was not sitting there with us at a counter in a public laundromat while his mother aired all their dirty laundry for anyone nearby.

I usually enjoy talking to people I don't know, but I will be more careful in laundromats. They seem to bring out the worst in us.