A True (mostly) Story

Being either a loaner or social outcast, depending on one’s point of view, offers myriad opportunity for vicariously experiencing unnamed others’ life adventures.  Keen observation has taught me that conversations in public, conducted by the unaccompanied, are generally considered bad form and should be avoided if one hopes to side step confinement by those whose professional duties are directed at keeping the general population safe and numb.  So, I have learned that the more prudent course of action when spending time alone in a public establishment dedicated to the purveyance of tasty comestibles is to chew silently and listen intently.

Following this course allows the practitioner ample opportunity to surreptitiously gain insight into the lives of complete strangers; oft times the emphasis falling on the root, strange.  To wit, I was recently afforded the opportunity of giving audience to a rather surreal conversation.

Looking up from the menu she announced, “I’ve never been to a Denny’s before.”

  

His eyes fixed on hers.  A momentary silence while he processed this incomprehensible piece of data, “You’ve never been to a Denny’s?  How old are you?”

She responded with an icy stare.  Then, with her attention refocused on the menu, “Do you like camping?  I want to go camping at Slab City.”

“Slab City?  I never heard of it.”

She pounded on her ever present smart phone.  “Here’s a picture.”

He immediately recognized something, “Yeah, I know where that is.  That’s over on the east side of the Salton Sea.  That whole area is a dump!  Why would you want to camp there?”

“It’s where this guy stayed in this movie, Into the Wild.  It’s sooo good!  It’s the story of a guy who gives up everything and goes to live in Alaska.”

“What does that have to do with Slab City?  Where does that say Slab City is?”

A lull in the conversation while she reads; I couldn’t see to tell if her lips were moving, “It’s in the Colorado Desert.”

“Well, the Colorado Desert is a big place.  That could be the Salton Sea.  But what does that have to do with Alaska?”

“He just travels around.  He lives off the land.  Then he ends up in Alaska and dies.”

“He dies In Alaska?  I think I know this story.  He gets eaten by a grizzly bear!”

“Yeah!  Wait.  No, berries!”

“He gets attacked by berries?”

“Nooo!  He eats poison berries.”

“Well where’s the bear?”

“Ha, ha, ha!  There is no bear.  He gets cut off by a flood and runs out of food.  So he eats berries and they’re poison!”

“I don’t think there are any bears around Slab City.  It’s in the middle of the desert.  Do you know where the Salton Sea is?  Do you know what the Salton Sea is?”

“No.  But he doesn’t get killed by a bear in Slab City.  Ha, ha, ha!  He dies from eating poison berries in Alaska.”

“I’m pretty sure the movie I heard of, he goes to Alaska to live with the bears and he gets eaten.”

“Ha, ha, ha!  There are no bears…”

About this time, the waitress delivered my Moons-Over-My-Hammy sandwich and my attention was diverted.  I missed the resolution of the attacking berries conundrum.  As I sat there, trying to make some sense of what I had heard, I reflected on the advantages of the solitary life, and noted what a dangerous place Alaska, or Slab City, must be.