Things I learned from my talkative travel companions this weekend

-or-

Why I didn't finish reading my book even though I spent eight hours on a bus this weekend

  1. Based on the relative decibel level of most people using in-ear earphones to listen to their iPods, any new government health care program had better start covering hearing aids soon or our next great generation will be needing to learn sign language to communicate with each other before they're fifty.
  2. A cast on your arm turns out to be a pretty good conversation starter. (Much to the dismay of everyone else on the bus.)
  3. "An apple has more caffeine than a cup of coffee."  So if you already had three cups of coffee today, better say no to that apple the stranger on a bus offers you.  (Wait, no it doesn't.)
  4. "In Mexico, if you order a hamburguesa, they put HAM on it.  Get it??!?! HAMburguesa!" (Actually, no.  But in Paraguay they do put a fried egg on it.)
  5. Some people are maybe a little too boastful about their parallel parking skills.
  6. I'm pretty sure no matter how good your parallel parking is, it's not going to score you the phone number of the pretty girl who happens to be sitting in the seat next to you.
  7. When that pretty girl gives you a list of "things she likes in a guy" and the first five are clearly not you, it's a hint. Don't try to make it about you.
  8. "Maybe we'll bump into each other while you're in New York" is not a date.  It's also highly unlikely if she neglects to tell you where she's staying or going.
  9. It might be amusing to your seatmate to read the transcripts of an entire comedy album aloud to your seatmate for two hours and he might even like it.  But I can guarantee the other people sitting near you will applaud when he gets off the bus in Baltimore and takes his iPad with him.
  10. You always thought the phrase was knee jerk reaction, but apparently it's really "jerk knee reaction."
  11. "If there was a list of things that plague the world, it would be like One: poverty, Two: Cancer, and Three: Traffic." (Actually, I think there is a list of things that plague the world, buddy.  I guess "traffic" is just conspicuous by it's absence.)
  12. People in their early twenties who have never dated anyone for more than six months at a time are pretty confident they know everything about how to make a marriage work.
  13. Look, I'm not trying to say you shouldn't strike up a conversation with the pretty and/or handsome stranger who has to sit next to you on a long trip.  I'm just suggesting that maybe you should hold those conversations a little more quietly because that cranky lady across the aisle who can't concentrate on her book because of your incessant and constant jabbering just might be typing every bananas thing you say into her phone for later posting on the interweb.  
That is all.