Conversation Excerpt

For those of you who have had the pleasure of being in creative writing workshops, I'm sure you remember the "eavesdrop on someone else and write everything down for the sake of learning good dialogue" exercise. (Of course, this was not at all difficult for me since I eavesdrop just because it's interesting. Although, I do find that as I get older I'm more and more inclined to start conversations with strangers and other passers-by. In line at Home Depot, picking up a newspaper, getting one of the many prescriptions that keeps this specimen of human machinery ticking...Yep, I'm becoming that chatty person who wants to know your opinion of the new organizational system in aisle 3 even though you just want to buy your toilet paper and Camel lights and get out of the store and away from that person who's prattling on and on about the pros and cons of color coding versus alphabetizing. It's a sickness. I can't stop. Or, maybe I don't want to stop...) Anyway, although this is a conversation had amongst some friends of mine and not strangers, I'm applying all the lovely skills I learned from that exercise to what you are about to read (which, unfortunately, might not be strong): Person #1: Hey, do you remember the movie "The Secret of NIMH"? Person #2: Isn't that a porno? Person #1: You know, the one with mice? Person #2: There are mice?!?! It seems that while Person #1 was referring the animated classic that taught us all quite a bit about the natural world and the danger of pesticides, ( I, for one, liked all of my kid movies with more dancing and singing, less stuff of my nightmares, but I digress...) Person #2 thought a skin flick by the name of "The Secret of Men" was being discussed. What I enjoyed most about this misunderstanding was that both Person #1 and Person #2 saw nothing amiss about the mention of mice in either scenario.