“Let me tell ya something,” the man began. “that's not what it was all about.” He stood there with his head off to one side and vigorously pointing a finger in the air in front of him.
The man he was talking to started to walk away.
The man who was speaking, we will call him Bob, was the type of person that once you get to know him, you studiously try to avoid talking to. He is also the type of person to jump into a conversation with no hesitation, if and only if the topic is a subject he thinks he knows. But when forced he will try to divert the conversation to an area of knowledge that he is comfortable with.The easiest way to quiet him or to get him to walk away is to try to bring a topic up that he has no idea about, and keep to it, no matter how hard he tries to divert the topic.
The man he was talking to, we will call him Steve, didn’t want to hear anything Bob was saying. They had worked together for several years, and Steve had no patience for Bob’s ramblings.
Steve walked away, turning slightly so as to not be completely rude. But Bob took this slight turn as an invitation to follow and continue his speech. Steve felt a sinking feeling creep up on him.
“That’s not what the war was about, I’ll tell you what it was really about.” Steve felt the sinking feeling grow stronger with every word Bob spoke.
“It was all about the Iraqi access to oil ports and fees.” Bob was short, and he sort of waddled when he walked
. This used to be amusing to Steve, but right now, there was no humor in it. Because the annoyance was following him, and he really wished it wouldn’t.
Bob kept talking, Steve couldn’t listen. It turned into a sort of white noise. Back before cable television, if you fell asleep in front of the television and woke up at 3am and the screen was filled with snow because the station was off the air for the night. Bobs words became the white noise of a television set to that station at 3am. But unlike that television, he couldnt just get up and turn the television off and go to bed.
Once in a while he would listen to what Bob was saying, just to make sure he was still pontificating, then tune out again.
A normal person might think it is odd that the person he speaking to hasnt looked at him after a minute or two. There might be the suspicion that the other person either wasn’t paying attention or didn’t want to hear what you had to say and was ignoring you. That is a normal person, Bob is not a normal person.
In the years that they had known each other, the best that could be said was that they had never actually resorted to fighting. Bob and his belief that he was smarter and more knowledgeable than every one of his coworkers was part of the problem. Bobs belief that he was also a better person, in general, than all of his coworkers was another part of the problem. But the root of the problem was he was wrong about most of what he thought about himself.
When speaking with his coworkers, he would occasionally make joking insults, but when he did he would preface the comment with “I don't want a grievance filed against me for this.” But behind that persons back, usually maybe only a minute later, he would make some of the most slanderous comments about the person he had just been talking to. That is bad enough, but he would tell this to other coworkers, who would inevitably tell the person what Bob had said.
Bob was openly of the opinion that he was far superior to everyone he worked with. He could do the work of all oft them, and do it in half the time. Several times he had told his coworkers this, and he wasn’t joking. He also believed that he was a better person all around. He bragged at one point that he had never gotten a traffic violation, he had never been divorced, he had children he loved, and that he was the most normal person out of all his coworkers. This comment spread like wildfire. It was commented on repeatedly and the general consensus was simple, Bob was an idiot.
The white noise continued, and Steve felt the beginnings of a headache growing right behind his left eye. He was still walking and was approaching the bathroom. “Maybe,” he thought to himself, “I could get rid of him in the bathroom?”
He opened the bathroom door and walked inside, much to his annoyance, Bob followed him in. He couldn’t believe it!
“The guy actually followed me into the bathroom!” Kept repeating over and over in his mind.
So time for plan B.
He opened one of the toilet stalls and went inside, closed the door and sat on the toilet seat.
Bob was still talking! The topic had changed to his opinions of how the French were not as bad as everyone is saying.
This is intolerable. Here he was sitting on a toilet, and the guy is still chattering away. Steve had not said a word or even acknowledged that Bob was talking in at least three or four minutes. Couldn’t he get the point that he didn’t want to talk. But that point seemed to fly over Bob’s head and off into the distance unseen.
Steve began to think how weird and funny this was. He decided to just sit there and see how long Bob would just keep talking.
Just then someone walked into the bathroom, he heard them walk to the urinal. Bob just kept talking. He heard the other person walk over to the sink and wash thier hands. Bob kept talking. And then he heard the person leave the bathroom, and still Bob kept talking.
This went on for ten minutes. Steve wasn’t sure why Bob left. But Bob just stopped talking, turned and walked out of the bathroom. At least he thought Bob had walked out. He didnt want to make any moves, just in case he hadn’t left, and was just standing next to the door. A feeling of paranoia came over him and replaced the creeping feeling he had.
How could he find out if he was still there? He didn’t want to say anything, because if he was still there, it would be acknowledge the conversation, and restart the whole thing over again.
Could he quietly kneel down and look under the stall to see if he is still there?
Wait a minute, he thought. This is stupid. I’m acting like a child here, This is STUPID.
He stood and opened the door and walked out of the stall, he wasn’t there! Woo hoo!
He walked over to the sink, washed his hands, splashed some water on his face and looked into the mirror. He could not believe that he had followed him into the bathroom. And then kept talking to him as he basically hid in a stall. But he was gone.
He took some paper towels and dried his hands and face. As he walked toward the door he threw the paper towels into the trash. Just as he reached for the door handle, a terrible though sprang at him. What if he is waiting outside the door?
God damn it! He railed at himself. He would be damned if he would allow this to happen! He wouldnt let this guy turn him into some sort of cowering paranoid mess.
He opened the door, stepped out and just off to the left was Bob, he was waiting for him. The sinking feeling that had been replaced by paranoia was quickly replaced by an overwhelming feeling of helplessness and self pity. He heard “Why is this happening? Did I do something wrong to deserve this? Why the fuck won’t he leave me alone.” Over and over those thoughts came at him. Starting as just waves until they were hitting him like a series of gigantic tidal waves.
Steve broke into a run. Bob was left standing there, looking at Steve running down the hall toward the door leading outside.
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