Peoplelistening
Jun. 18th, 2003 11:40 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
terryclothMissed the gaggle of testers I usually eat lunch with, today, so while slowly eating my traditional thanksgiving dinner (which they serve every wednesday) I listened to people chatting to each other nearby...
One lady was talking at length about a ski vacation. It was really amazing -- she went on for fifteen minutes without anyone else at her table getting a word in edgewise, wandering from what she'd done, to snowboarding, to kids' ski camp, to the lack of adult women skiing, to... well, it continued like that. Kind of interesting.
But then this man over in the other direction caught my ear. Apparently, his daughter had flunked math, and he was blaming the other kids for being unruly, and the teacher for being too harsh and too permissive and for trying to be a 'friend' to the kids and for not having a bouncer handy to beat up kids who were unruly and for smoking near the school and for everything else under the sun. His daughter, of course, was blameless, because she'd once gotten a B in math, and how was she supposed to resist joining in the hooliganism if everyone else was doing it? He accepted some responsibility -- he shouldn't have believed the teacher when she said he didn't need to come in for a conference.
His friend replied with a list of conditions he should give the school, and what to threaten them with if they didn't comply.
One lady was talking at length about a ski vacation. It was really amazing -- she went on for fifteen minutes without anyone else at her table getting a word in edgewise, wandering from what she'd done, to snowboarding, to kids' ski camp, to the lack of adult women skiing, to... well, it continued like that. Kind of interesting.
But then this man over in the other direction caught my ear. Apparently, his daughter had flunked math, and he was blaming the other kids for being unruly, and the teacher for being too harsh and too permissive and for trying to be a 'friend' to the kids and for not having a bouncer handy to beat up kids who were unruly and for smoking near the school and for everything else under the sun. His daughter, of course, was blameless, because she'd once gotten a B in math, and how was she supposed to resist joining in the hooliganism if everyone else was doing it? He accepted some responsibility -- he shouldn't have believed the teacher when she said he didn't need to come in for a conference.
His friend replied with a list of conditions he should give the school, and what to threaten them with if they didn't comply.
