What’s the strangest thing you’ve overheard in public?
I’m not sure I’ve overheard anything really off the wall in public but as a teenager I saw something odd in public.
My older sister and I were taking the Greyhound bus across the prairie provinces to visit our grandparents in Drumheller, Alberta. It was about a 15 hour bus ride and we’d done it multiple times. I loved the freedom and thought of it like an adventure.
To this day, I can remember this one incident so clearly. The lady across the aisle from us was eating a Caramilk chocolate bar. Ooey gooey caramel trapped inside little cube-shaped pieces of milk chocolate, for those of you who have never experienced one.
No sooner had she polished off the chocolate bar, she fell asleep with her head back against the back of the seat/window.
Minutes later I looked over at her and the caramel filling was oozing (for lack of a better word), out of the corner of her mouth and heading down the side of her chin. I poked my sister and pointed at the spectacle. She was drooling caramel in her sleep!
It was the grossest yet funniest thing I’d ever seen in my thirteen years on earth. Looking back now, thirteen years is a very short span of time, however.
Of course when the lady came to, we acted as nonchalant as possible and did not watch her look around sheepishly to see if anyone else had seen, as she wiped it from her face.
Oh and an update about the visit with my younger sister. All went well. We survived. Might’ve even had a bit of fun. The house got cleaned in time and to my specifications. Bella-Lena criticized me for worrying so much about the house being clean and accused me of “stunting”, (which I had to get her to explain to my gen x brain). To which I replied, it’s perfectly natural to want to clean the house before company, right??

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