How to End a Conversation

Back in the golden era of travel, back before lateral movement on the planet became a nightmare of lost luggage, missed connections, and creepy security goons, I had the great good fortune to take a train from British Columbia to Montreal. This was a respectably long trip involving several days of sitting, interspersed by trips to the dining car, where you sat anywhere there was space and had a pleasant meal on nice plates with strangers who were on no hurry, as well as to the bar car, which opened early in the day.

It was at this civilized convenience where I found myself seated one afternoon next to an old fellow with an amiable face and a weakly bubbling drink. We exchanged the obligatory where-are-you-going-where-have-you-come-from remarks and then quickly discovered that we had nothing else to say of any remote interest to one another.

Just when I spotted somebody coming into the place whom I had enjoyed talking to the previous day he declared “I have 14 grandchildren.” I smiled vaguely. “Six of them live in Halifax.” He reached for his wallet. My heart sank. Visions sprang to mind of blurry snapshots of sticky moppets or family photos where one cousin was indistinguishable from the next. Imagine my surprise when at last he found what he was looking for and showed it to me with some pride. It was a page ripped out of a small notebook with a list of names on it. He gave this to me and while I was looking at it he explained where each one lived. “See, Tom and Mary and Patrick, they're my daughter Eleanor's children. They live in Halifax. And here, Hugh and Sally...” and so we made our slow way down the list.

Finally I managed to give back his list and was formulating an exit strategy when he started in on a detailed biography of each one, their favorite sports, their school projects, their piano lessons and funny sayings, their summer camps and Christmas pageants, their ailments and triumphs and food preferences. I was frantic to get away, but couldn't think of a credible excuse: phone call? Don't think so. Someone at the door? Nope. Late for an appointment? Nope. Finally I really did have to go to the bathroom so I broke in on the biography of the hockey buff from Manitoba, excused myself and fled.

Since then I have made a study of breakaway lines and techniques. As a public service I offer up my findings here so that others may be spared:

1. Cough a lot. Then say the doctor said it’s probably not contagious.

2. Break in with a desperate expression and ask where the nearest toilet might be.

3. Stare fixedly at a point just above the person’s left ear. Back away slowly.

4. Start stroking their upper arm while moving your face closer to theirs in rapt attention.

5. Ask, “Do you like spiders?” while reaching for your purse.

6. Look over their shoulder towards, say, a door, and shout “Oh, my God! They’ve found me!” Then dash off in the other direction.

7. Pick your nose thoughtfully.

8. Laugh at inappropriate times.

9. Whenever possible, return the conversation to the subject of your aunt’s skin problems.

10. Pull out a comb choked with cat fur and start to rearrange their hair.

11. Reach inside your clothes and scratch, murmuring, “Pesky critters!”

12. If you have not said anything yet, at your first opportunity say something in a foreign language. Make one up, if necessary.

13. Pull out your wallet containing at least 20 photos of your pets. Starting with the first, describe all its habits and illnesses in minute detail.

14. Ask how much money they make. If they should, inexplicably, tell you, then ask about their husband’s/wife’s income. Then move on to their children, uncles, and so forth.

15. Smile vaguely, point to a window and make a long statement in a foreign language. Russian is good.

16. Look deep into their eyes, lean forward and solemnly ask "Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your savior?"

17. Belch long and loud. Do not smile.

18. Gaze searchingly, longingly at your oppressor for a count of ten. Then say "You are so beautiful - may I give you a tattoo?"

19. Launch into an extremely detailed account of something like a bit of computer code or anything else that interests you. Explain everything. Don't stop for breath.

Using these suggestions as a starting point, develop other deterrent methods suitable to the circumstances. Be careful not to use a method that might attract the interest of your assa ilant. Do not, for example, use #16 with somebody with a stack of Watchtowers under their arm, or #18 with a Hell's Angel.

The Fact and Fantasy of Growing Old

We are surrounded by perkiness, apparently an affliction primarily of girls, but a lesser number of older women as well as men of all ages. It manifests as a chirpy tone of voice, a vacuous smile and an unshakable conviction that its practitioner is a fascinating conversationalist. It is also associated with the lamentable delusion that those lacking these symptoms are in some way infirm if not clinically depressed, and need to be snapped out of it one way or another.

I dread my biannual trip to the dentist, not out of fear of dentistry in general or my dentist in particular but rather because the first phase of any such visit is half an hour at the mercy of a perky young thing, whose name might be Tiffany, wearing a smock with puppies on it who is apparently unable to spend a single moment free of light-hearted commentary on food, dogs, her children, other people's children, the weather, today's political scandal, something that happened on American Idol, amusing anecdotes involving almost anybody, the shocking price of gasoline, and any of a hundred other topics that crash through her mind like a trapped Dragonfly in a doomed search for the exit.

I tried once just to file the tumult away as mere background racket, like bad music in another room, a meaningless annoyance that could just be ignored. It worked pretty well until, after a few blessed moments of indulging in my own thoughts, I noticed that all sound and motion had ceased. Then I noticed that Tiffany was giving me a good hard look. Clearly I had missed something, something that required a response, and now Tiffany was annoyed. I tried to look cheerful and attentive and vocalized something that I hoped was sufficiently vague that she could read into it whatever she wanted. Unconvinced, she went back to work with greater than average energy and thoroughness with one of those diabolical hooked things they use to clean the plaque out of the very marrow of your bones. Which is how I discovered that it was necessary to listen to these monologues at least well enough to respond appropriately as needed.

In another memorable instance, my ancient cousin, Chrissie, and I went to a chop house in Burlington with the idea of eating, perhaps, a steak and a salad and discussing this and that. A quiet evening for a couple of old dolls with bad eyesight to reminisce and gently gossip. So imagine our dismay when an eager associate (I believe they are now called) with a metal thing through her eyebrow and a skirt barely long enough to cover her pubic hair slid onto the bench right next to us and, with a kilowatt smile through perfect teeth announced, “HI, MY NAME IS CAROLINE AND I WILL BE YOUR SERVER THIS EVENING!” Then she slid a couple of menus to us as if they were secret messages from Chinese intelligence. Then she propped her elbows on our table and counted off the day's specials on her long, blood-red nails. “CAN I BRING YOU A DRINK WHILE YOU'RE DECIDING?” she trilled. And here she counted off all the beers they had on tap on her lurid claws. Being the bolder of the two of us, and having heard of none of the beers on the list, I ordered something completely at random, Chrissie had the same, and we were briefly left in peace.

When our beers came we instinctively moved closer together for safety, but the Lioness merely flashed us another kilowatt and left us. Then we picked out our food and waited. And waited and waited, wondering whether our lioness had been devoured by some larger predator, but finally she came, we ordered, our food arrived, and we were eating it as old farts often do, slowly, methodically, with many rest periods filled with conversation. Our Associate had an uncanny knack for sensing when we had hit a really interesting place in some story and she would materialize at that moment, crouch down so as to be at eye level and inquire “IS EVERYTHING ALL RIGHT? DO YOU NEED ANYTHING? HOW'S YOUR SALAD? OOH GOOD!”

She did this at least twice, apparently not having considered the notion that we might have called her over if we had found a Band-Aid under the steak or a spider in the salad.

It was never made clear whether she thought that, old and decrepit as we clearly were, we were also stone deaf, although how she thought we were communicating is hard to guess, or whether she always trumpeted like that to everybody. In any case, the volume of her remarks was not so much the issue as the delivery, which took the form of the sort of relentless cheerfulness often espoused by well-meaning nurses aids conveying information of any sort to one of their elderly charges. A jolly, happy Mickey Mouse voice announcing “Time for our bowel movement, Millie,” or “Your daughter was crushed under the wheels of a train this morning so she won't be in today, Mitch” or “I'm sorry you seem to have run out of money, so we have to throw you out into the street now, Maud.”

Here's what worries me: I imagine that time has passed, I am feeble and half-blind and evil-tempered and installed in some place that employs nurses aids. And one day one of these moppets rustles up to me there in my wheel chair and snatches away the Dorothy Sayers with the torn front cover I am reading for the third time. Then she loses my place and bleats for the tenth time that week “C'mon, Debby, you don't want to read that gloomy thing again – let's go down to the common area and play bingo.” And then I imagine gathering up the last dregs of strength left in my porous old bones, and springing up out of the wheel chair and grabbing the miserable wretch by the throat and choking the bumptious life out of her.

This is where my fantasy ends as I lose interest after this happy ending. But if there is any lesson to be taken from this story it is this: Do not tell me what kind of day to have.

My New Life

An open letter to all my dear friends, old and new, valued colleagues, classmates, co-workers, neighbors:

The month of July has been overwhelming to say the least.  I couldn’t believe my good fortune when I received an email on Independence Day from Mr. Ulf Van Anderson from the Cyber Lottery in the Netherlands.  As Mr. Anderson explained it, “The online electronic-raffle draws was conducted from an exclusive list of 250,000 international emails accounts picked by our Electronic Random Selection System (ERSS) from an exclusive list  However, no tickets were sold. After the automated computer ballot collection, your E-mail address emerged as a winner category ‘A’…” This means that I won €1,000,000!  That’s something like $1,450,000!  Exchange rates are very variable, of course, but that is a whole lot of money, and all I had to do was tell them my name, address, phone number and a few other trivial details. I could get a new lawnmower! The check hasn’t arrived yet, but these things take time.
Then the very next day I got an email from FedEx saying that they had a parcel for me which was being held up owing to some little procedural detail.  They didn’t explain why the email message came from Oman, but they did mention that the parcel contained a bank draft for $2,100,000 and a letter from my colleague in Ghana where the parcel was waiting for me. All I needed to do was contact them by phone in Ghana or by email, and give them a few personal details and a handling fee amounting to $210, and they would have the parcel in my hands within 24 hours.  I confess I did not respond quickly to this as I do not know anybody in Ghana or even anybody who has been there, or anybody who has $2,100,000 to give me, but then I figured, what the heck.  That’s a pretty good return on $210.  I expect the check to arrive any day now and I guess I should give some thought to what private island to buy.
At about the same time I got this sad email: “My name is Muhammed Azeem, Am the CEO of Al Muhad Contracting Co., in United Arab Emirate. I have been diagnosed with Esophageal cancer and i have less than two months to live. I have been sick for almost a year now it has gotten worse. I want you to assist me to dispatch my wealth to a charity organizations. For helping me, you will receive 30% of the money.” Maybe he got my email address from the FedEx people in Oman.  He didn’t say how much money we are talking about here, but he is bound to be rich as Croesus.  He said to respond to a Japanese email address, so I guess he is getting treatment there, and is probably too sick to deal with this sort of thing, poor man.
And then the next morning I got a message from the Obama Foundation offering me $500,000 just as soon as I supply the usual details.  Well, this surely must be a trustworthy offer since President Obama wouldn’t dare lend his name to anything that wasn’t on the up and up.  It is a bit worrying though that he would be using a bank in the UK rather than one here.  Are our banks headed for the cliff again?
Then, within 24 hours of this I got two more tempting offers:
From Hong Kong: “Hello Friend, I am Mr. Si-Wan Park, manager on deposit and remittance in Woori Bank,Hong Kong.; I have a sensitive, confidential brief from Hong Kong and I am asking for your partnership in re- profiling funds ($15,557,210.00 USD).
What I require from you is your honest co-operation and I guarantee that this will be executed under a legitimate arrangement that will protect you and I from any breach of the law. Please accept my apologies, if I have encroached on your privacy without prior notice, keep my confidence and disregard this email if you do not appreciate this proposition I have offered you.
All confirmable documents to back up this fund shall be made available to you, as soon as I receive your reply via my private email (parksiwan01@hotmail.com.hk ), I shall let you know what is required of you.

Regards
Si-Wan Park“
While it’s true I have no idea what Mr. Park is suggesting, still $15,557,210 is a pretty enticing lure – how could you go wrong just finding out? And then there was the second one, again from Ghana: “On behalf of the United Nations Organization, We wish to inform you that the payment Committee in-conjunction with the Overseas Credit Commission has been mandated to compensate all the outstanding  Foreign Investors in the West African Region this quarter of the fiscal year 2011, your email and Particulars were discovered as next on the list (Category "A") due for payment of US$14,500,000.00 {Fourteen Million Five Hundred Thousand United States Dollars} Only.”  So I guess this must have something to do with my mysterious benefactor who gave a $2,100,000 check to FedEx for which I needed to supply name and address and so forth.  And here they were, asking for all that information yet again.
Unfortunately it seems possible that something might be wrong with this latest remittance, as I soon received yet another message from Ghana:
“There is information I think might interest you. First kindly confirm if you are the owner of this email address.
I am Mr. Ken Solomon, I work with foreign remittance department with a bank here in Ghana. I do not know if  am talking to the right person, But I will like you to confirm if you are the owner of this email ID. But somehow I am not comfortable and too sure that I am communicating with the right owner of this email.
If you can prove that you are the owner of this email ID, then I will furnish you with the information that I have for you, when I am convinced than I am talking to the right person and will proceed with you.
I am taking this preventive measure because I do not want to talk to the wrong person because of the sensitivity of the information regarding the issue.
Other details will be forwarded to you as soon as I am convinced that I am communicating with the right person,”
While I was mulling this over, I received a message from Moammar Gaddafi’s second wife who got my email address from Moammar’s address book.  I can only imagine he got it from Muhammed Azeem, that poor wretch with esophageal cancer being treated in Japan.  Anyway, Mrs. Gaddafi proposes that she send me $40,000,000 that she has stashed away in an Asian bank somewhere.  Then I will see to its investment in sound businesses in exchange for 30% of it.  That would be $12,000,000.  Fair recompense for an afternoon’s work, I say.  By and by her son Alaa will come over and I am to help him set up a business.  And all she needs to get this moving is the same information that I have been handing out to anybody that asks from all over West Africa and the middle east.
In similar offers, both humanitarian and commercial, I have been offered

·     £3,000,000 which amounts to something like $4,800,000 by a pathetic Greek woman who said: “I have decided to donate this fund to you and want you to use this gift which comes from my husbands effort to fund the upkeep of widows, widowers, orphans, destitute, the down-trodden, physically challenged children, barren-women and persons who prove to be genuinely handicapped financially.”

·     30% of $19,500,000 by Mr. Song Lile, a credit officer at the Hang Seng Bank in Hong Kong to “effect a transaction”

·     $15,000,000 by Mr. Chu-yu Soong, a retired operations manager of the Bank of China, Malaysia to pretend to be next-of-kin for a dormant account

·     $2,500,000,000 by a Finance Director of some bank in Lagos who says that it is there in my name and somebody name Newman Lazarus is trying to get it and whoever comes up with the $185 processing fee will be the lucky winner

·     Some substantial slice of $70,000,000,000 by Hashim al-Adly, brother of the former Interior Minister of Egypt under Hosni Mubarak who pilfered every dime and squirreled it away all over Europe.  My role would be to receive the stolen goods and launder it.

·     £12,400,000 ($20,000,000, more or less) by Mr Roy Hill to provide respectability for a scheme which boils down to robbing the estate of somebody who died intestate and 35% of whose assets are offered to me.  This is very similar to the above-mentioned proposal of Mr. Chu-yu Soong, leading me to wonder what Asian estate laws look like.

·     And finally, a stirring proposal by yet another Pitiful Rich Person, Sister Mrs. Melina Komol from Comoros Island who is circling the drain and wants to give me $4,500,000 “for the help of orphanages home, christian schools, widows, the less privilages and churches for propagating the word of God, according to my desire and my late husband before his death.”

To make a long story short, during the month of July I have been offered, by numerous people I don’t know, in various capacities, in places I have never been, something like $2,596,256,815, offset by $395 in fees.  This does not include the philanthropic and cancerous Mr Azeem from whom I am expecting numerous millions or the larcenous Mr. al-Adley whose munificence I am expecting in the billions.  I’ll be worth more than a drug cartel.
And so, when this gush of money starts pouring in, which should be any day now, I will have to put my old life behind me, buy new clothes, spend a month at a fat farm, do something with my hair, learn how to behave on a yacht, and how to address heads of state.

I’ll miss you guys.