Yesterday I rode the brown line for the first time in ages. Riding the blue line almost exclusively makes it easy to forget how different the train lines are from one another, but it didn’t take long to remember that the brown line is a different beast altogether. I was wedged against the window, pinned by two women. They obviously worked together, and both were blonde and bubbly late-20s or early-30s professionals. They got on at Clark & Lake and started talking about the new office hottie.

“When I saw him on our floor, I was like ‘finally!’, you know?”

“Totally. I totally had to ask Chris for a 10 minute break to cool down…”

They blathered on and on about that for a while until there was a lull in the conversation. I love that part, because that’s the part where the office-buddies-talking-outside-the-office phenomenon is stripped of its pretenses and it becomes blatantly obvious which one of them wants to get away from the other. Her eyes shift and you can tell she’s thinking about how she’d much rather be reading her dog-eared copy of The Da Vinci Code, or finishing that Sudoku she started earlier, and the awkward pause continues for a few more seconds. Then one of them breaks the silence. The person who breaks the silence is the person the other one wants to get away from. In this case, the person broke the silence did so to complain about her disastrous trip to Ethiopia. Part of the problem, apparently, was that she took the trip with a guy she had only been on four dates with.

“He was nice, and we totally got along, but it was touch and go the whole time,” she said. “He was so disorganized. I mean, I planned the whole trip anyway, but he wasn’t ready at all. He kept drinking my bottled water and taking the medicine I brought… I mean, I only packed for one.”

Then there was the flight fiasco. They booked flights on Ethiopia Air to take them to different parts of the country, but when they say to reconfirm your flight on Ethiopia Air they mean it, apparently. “The guy was like, ‘I’m sorry, but we can’t let you on the plane. Your seats have not been reconfirmed.’ I was like, who does that? They always say reconfirm, but nobody actually does it! Then the guy started saying, ‘Ma’am, please, be legal.’ Be legal! He kept saying that! I was like, uhh, no you didn’t!”

Oh. Here’s a picture from Ethiopia so you know what Ethiopia we’re talking about here.

Yeah. THAT Ethiopia.

Seriously though – who goes on vacation to Africa with someone you’ve been on four dates with?!

Oh yeah – then this morning some chick on the blue line was telling her friend that when she has a baby, she’s gonna teach it to eat “real good.”

“I’m gonna give him fruit snacks and stuff. Not the sugary kind – the good kind with the real fruit in ’em, cuz babies don’t know the difference,” she said.

“Yeah, those are good for you,” her friend replied.

“I’m gonna feed ’em all kinds of good stuff. I’m gonna teach my baby to like fruit, and cheese. And meat.”

(this post has probably been at least to some extent inspired by the very excellent website Overheard In New York. Oh – and go here to read devastatingly depressing info about Ethiopia, like the fact that the average life expectancy is 48 years, or maybe that they have a 10% infant mortality rate. Think about this, cluck your tongue and nod your head “no” because it’s such a shame. Then finish your Quiznos sub and go watch that Chronic of Narnia video for the millionth time. Done with that? Afro Ninja. Ha ha. Internet funny.)