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a rambling lunch companion

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

I went and had a $6 stir fry at the local greasy spoon for lunch today, at around 3:30. Unemployment, gotta love the hours! Anyway, I was sitting in a place occupied by maybe three other customers, and wouldn't I sit at the table where a jabbering senior seemed to have set up shop for the day.

By jabbering, I don't mean talkative the way seniors sometimes get. That's not jabbering at all. By jabbering I mean rambling to himself at a conversational volume about whatever he saw around him or heard on the radio or read in his big pile of newspapers. He was carrying on at length about how the one table leg was a little off, causing the table to wobble. He felt so strongly about this issue that he got up to talk about it with the girl behind the counter. Telling her how whenever he comes in, he has to fix the table by putting something under that one leg, but that every time he comes back, 'someone has taken it'. He did this twice.

I was just wondering what road the fellow had gone down that led to that path, and it suddenly occurred to me that this could be my fate. I love to talk, God knows, and lately - without a job or any other similar activities - I've picked up the habit of talking to myself. Yup, this is what come become of me, all too easily. Ah well, see you all in 35 years. I'll be the one pestering the automated serving robot staff about the crummy anti-gravity in my chair.