Conversations With Old People
A couple of days ago, I was talking the bus home from camp as per usual. That day, I was particularly elated because it was my last day in camp for about 2 weeks. I'll be on leave for 10 days, and including the weekends, that makes 2 weeks. So naturally I was euphoric that day, despite all the shit that I've had to face from my boss from hell. Thank goodness I was in a good mood that day, or the old man I met would have seen a really ugly and irritable side of me.
What old man? Ok so the story goes. As I said i was taking the bus home from camp as usual, went up to the upper deck of the bus as I usually did, and proceeded to search for a seat. Catching the bus during a peak hour, most of the seats were needless to say, occupied. I then chanced upon this seat beside this rather frail, peculiar looking old man and sat down. He seemed to be a little reluctant to let anyone sit beside him, and I think he only grudgingly made space to me when I took my initiative to grab that seat.
He seemed rather annoyed at me, and showed it out blatantly with his one-note face. I tried to ignore it and just went about my normal bus routine, which involves mostly either reading a book, listening to my mp3 player and daydreaming, or simply observing the people around me. As I was happily daydreaming and deep in thought, that old man broke my chain of thought by trying to engage in conversation. Started with really frivolous talk like what I'm doing, what camp I'm in, how old I am, blablablablabla. Basically stuff you talk about when you're searching for the cure to your insomnia. Being, or rather trying to be, the good samaritan that I should be, I grudgingly obliged in his Q & A session.
Helping out the elderly is one of the activities I engage in rathe regularly, as it is part of my church ministry. Naturally I knew that this own person wanted to be heard. He probably was deprived of attention and had to seize any opportunity to get the opportunity to get heard.
The conversation was at first tolerable, albeit barely, but I was still mentally sound, and simply had to answer his rather silly and pointless questions about me, like where I stay, where I studied at etc. etc. Soon, the quality of the conversation greatly declined, and I found my irritability exacerbating rapidly. Still, I put on a straight face, trying my darnest not to show how freaking bored and irritated I am at his conversations and that I just wanted to sleep and didn't want to entertain him. It was quite a miracle I could still appear nonchalant about the whole situation at that time. Haha.
The old man soon got engaged in a rather emotional tirade about how his generation suffered during the war, and i vaguely remembered something about syo-nan-to, which I believe stands for land of the rising sun. Then he proceeded with the telling of some totally sleep-inducing facts ( although it was obviously not so to him) about people cutting grass off to eat, and some things about people getting shot and stuff. You can tell from my rather vague memory that I was clearly not paying attention to him. As I said I still chose to treat this man with proper love and respect, so there was a great disparity with what I said and did as compared to what I was thinking. It is called.... pretending. All the way I was going "hmm, yes. Oh ok." when in my mind I was going " Please shut up! I can't take it any longer!"
How I made it through the freaking 40 min bus ride was a complete mystery. But I think now my threshold for incoherent and senseless babble from the elderly has greatly increased.
Hopefully the next time I go visiting the elderly, I'll be also treated to such a "wonderful" time of entertainment! Haha
What old man? Ok so the story goes. As I said i was taking the bus home from camp as usual, went up to the upper deck of the bus as I usually did, and proceeded to search for a seat. Catching the bus during a peak hour, most of the seats were needless to say, occupied. I then chanced upon this seat beside this rather frail, peculiar looking old man and sat down. He seemed to be a little reluctant to let anyone sit beside him, and I think he only grudgingly made space to me when I took my initiative to grab that seat.
He seemed rather annoyed at me, and showed it out blatantly with his one-note face. I tried to ignore it and just went about my normal bus routine, which involves mostly either reading a book, listening to my mp3 player and daydreaming, or simply observing the people around me. As I was happily daydreaming and deep in thought, that old man broke my chain of thought by trying to engage in conversation. Started with really frivolous talk like what I'm doing, what camp I'm in, how old I am, blablablablabla. Basically stuff you talk about when you're searching for the cure to your insomnia. Being, or rather trying to be, the good samaritan that I should be, I grudgingly obliged in his Q & A session.
Helping out the elderly is one of the activities I engage in rathe regularly, as it is part of my church ministry. Naturally I knew that this own person wanted to be heard. He probably was deprived of attention and had to seize any opportunity to get the opportunity to get heard.
The conversation was at first tolerable, albeit barely, but I was still mentally sound, and simply had to answer his rather silly and pointless questions about me, like where I stay, where I studied at etc. etc. Soon, the quality of the conversation greatly declined, and I found my irritability exacerbating rapidly. Still, I put on a straight face, trying my darnest not to show how freaking bored and irritated I am at his conversations and that I just wanted to sleep and didn't want to entertain him. It was quite a miracle I could still appear nonchalant about the whole situation at that time. Haha.
The old man soon got engaged in a rather emotional tirade about how his generation suffered during the war, and i vaguely remembered something about syo-nan-to, which I believe stands for land of the rising sun. Then he proceeded with the telling of some totally sleep-inducing facts ( although it was obviously not so to him) about people cutting grass off to eat, and some things about people getting shot and stuff. You can tell from my rather vague memory that I was clearly not paying attention to him. As I said I still chose to treat this man with proper love and respect, so there was a great disparity with what I said and did as compared to what I was thinking. It is called.... pretending. All the way I was going "hmm, yes. Oh ok." when in my mind I was going " Please shut up! I can't take it any longer!"
How I made it through the freaking 40 min bus ride was a complete mystery. But I think now my threshold for incoherent and senseless babble from the elderly has greatly increased.
Hopefully the next time I go visiting the elderly, I'll be also treated to such a "wonderful" time of entertainment! Haha
