Overheard: Social Vomit

By John

[Every week, CC and John will bring you some of the weirdest, funniest, saddest things he hears on his college campus. Join the Overheard revolution! Leave your own overheard convos in the comments.]

“So this sandwich – portabello and provolone, I mean, it should have been good — but I mean, it was, like, a slab of provolone. Like, exactly a blob. Like I was trying to eat a brick. And so then I ate it, and I went back to my room, and I threw it up, and it was like ‘Yup, now I get to have dinner again’.”

“My mom, you know, she’s pretty, but she’s not that pretty.”

“Yesterday, I did that thing where – you know? You’re, like, Wal-mart, and you’re Halloween shopping, but you end up in that weird kinda retail fog. And so you go, hey, furniture, maybe I want a … futon, and hey, mechanical stuff… I want some turpentine, and then you walk around some more and then you’re outside and it turns out all you bought was an industrial size thing of Cheez-Puffs.”

A child — six, maybe seven — is at the counter in a Salvation Army store. He has a small bag of plastic Wild West action figures in his hand, and some change in the other.

“That’s one dollar and five cents,” says the old lady at the counter.

“There, now, give the lady the dollar,” says the boy’s father, behind him.

Slowly, carefully, the boy takes out each coin. He needs to make sure that he counts them perfectly — he needs this to be absolutely correct. He pushes them across the counter, looking up solemnly.

“Is this right?” he asks.

“Yes, that’s right.”

He smiles.

“So I went back to my room, and of course I figured nobody was there, so I opened the door and was just ‘All right! Masturbation seems like a good idea!’ And then my roommate’s girlfriend was on the couch, just kinda looking at me.”

“I wanted everyone in high school to call me ‘blow me down’. Then it sorta came back in my face. Like, the blowing.”

“Maya Angelou’s coming here?”

“Yeah, I’m imagining it sorta like this: Maya Angelou sets up a half pipe on the stage, and just takes an Impala and does tricks for an hour. Then she flies off a jump into the audience and the crowd goes crazy.”

“It’s a shame that ‘penis’ defines what it does, you know, because it’s such a good word.”