While waiting for my salad to get rung up at the check-out stand, my cashier (who is of the old Baltimore type, mid-50s white woman with brittle gray marble hair, face horrendously wrinkled from killing anywhere from a 6 to 30 pack of beer every night before sleep for 4 decades) looked past me to a man purchasing lotto tickets at the tobacco booth. She was dressed in her Eddie's apron and a ragged striped shirt, he wore a blue polo tucked into khakis. The subsequent exchange went something like this:
WOMAN: Who is that I hear? Is that Chip?
MAN: Yup, it's me, except that my name's Chet.
WOMAN: Oh, come on, I can't be expected to remember your name. I've seen you before.
MAN: Yup, okay.
(She waits while my receipt prints)
WOMAN: Besides, I can only remember your dog's name anyway. What's your dog's name?
MAN: Jack
WOMAN: See? There ya go: "Jack's dad."
MAN: I thought you remembered my dog's name.
WOMAN: I didn't even know you had a dog.
(Man finishes his business and starts to head out the door. She hands me my receipt.)
MAN: Yeah, hmmm, yeah...
WOMAN: By the way, where are my water chestnuts?
(She gestures to an indistinct location off the corner of the room)
MAN: Oh yeah, the water chestnuts... hold...hold on.
(He exits the door)
ME: Thank you
WOMAN: Have a nice day.
The entire exchange took less than twenty seconds, and nowhere within it was it clear whether the man or woman knew each other at all, yet they somehow carried on a nearly meaningless conversation with extreme familiarity, one that ended as abruptly as it started. Her rhetorical flourishes counted as points scored on a playing field with completely indiscernible/likely nonexistent rules. I left bewildered by their ridiculous verbal dumb-show and the possibility that the woman's water chestnuts may never arrive.
