The Grouchy Man and The Cell Phone Lady

A grouchy man walked into Planet Care today.  I don't know why he was grouchy.  He just was.  He walked past me in an aisle where I was running back stock.  I looked him in the eye, smiled, and said "hi" as he approached me.  He just looked at me with no response and walked on by.  I thought nothing of it.

Immediately after that, a lady who was talking on her cell phone walked into the same aisle where I was running back stock and the grouchy man stood staring at cans of soup.  She walked past me as she was talking on her cell phone.  And then I heard the grouchy man say in a very loud and grouchy voice, "If you have to talk, please keep your voice down.  It is very annoying."

At first I thought he was talking to me.  And then I saw the lady with the cell phone looking at him, stunned. 

"Excuse me?" she said. 

"I said, if you have to talk, please keep your voice down.  It is very annoying." 

She was momentarily speechless.  "I, I'm talking to my husband," she stammered. She began to whisper into the phone about the grouchy man who asked her to keep her voice down. "It's very annoying, he said."

I marveled at this scenario.  First of all, the grouchy man stated, "If you have to talk," with emphasis on the word "have." What constitutes having to talk?  Some people, it would seem, have an innate need to constantly verbalize their thoughts, feelings, observations, pontifications in a relatively stream of conscious manner.  This seems to be driven by a biological predisposition to moving the mouth.  Others may need to communicate critical information involving national security in a timely manner.  Others may need to negotiate a top secret rendezvous.  It seemed to me that this question was too subjective, hence open-ended. 

Next, the grouchy man made the request, which was spoken more as a demand than a request, that the talker keep her voice down.  Why?  Because it was very annoying.  What was annoying?  Her voice?  The fact that she was talking?  The fact that she was talking on a cell phone?  Did he ask every person he passed to stop talking?  If so, how did he ever get anything done?  What would he do on a subway in New York?  Tell everyone to stop talking?  What does he do in large department stores during the holiday season?  Wear a sandwich board saying, "Don't talk?" What entitles him to demand people stop talking?  The world is full of talking.  We just have to put up with it. 

The woman told the grouchy man that she was talking to her husband.  She emphasized that point.  Was she indirectly threatening grouchy man by suggesting her husband would kick his ass? Did it validate her talking any more to be addressing her partner, who, I feel it is important to note, is a man?  Would it validate her talking if she were talking with any man?  Or does it only count when the man is your husband? 

Grouchy man scowled as he walked out of the aisle where I was running back stock and rounded the corner into the next aisle.  The woman walked in the opposite direction.  Did she think this would lessen her chances of running into the grouchy man again?  It would seem to me that it would increase the likelihood since he would be walking towards her from the next aisle over. 

Poor sad people.  The grouchy man continued to seethe on into the evening, opening a can of organic soup and eating it unheated directly from its packaging.  A scraggly cat begged piteously for scraps.  After the man finished his meager meal, he put the empty can on the floor for the cat to clean and slouched down grouchily in his sagging armchair.  The large house contained no other life save him and the cat, who loudly slurped up the residual bits of cream of tomato soup.

The cell phone lady drove her Miata to the country club where she complained to her masseuse about the rude man she encountered at the grocery store.  She sat in a hot tub afterwards.  The facial mask that had been carefully applied by an esthetician cracked around her mouth and furrowed brow as she related the story to her tennis partner, who later joined her for gin and tonics at the bar.  She drank one too many and missed the chair she'd intended to sit in.  She fractured her tailbone.  

The grouchy man sits alone, wondering why he's so grouchy.  Was he always this way?  He thinks not.  But he can't remember when things changed.  He pulls himself up out of the chair and kicks the empty cans aside on his way to bed. 

The cell phone lady lies in bed with an inflatable inner tube under her ass thinking of nothing at all as she flips through the channels on her wide screen flat screen deluxe screen t.v.