Conversations with Invisible People

There are people who think they're invisible, and don't quite care what they're talking about, thinking no one else will hear them. Such was the case when I got on a Jerusalem bus the other day and sat in the back, which I usually don't do.

Two American teenage grunge-kids were "lounging" on the back seats, taking over two seats each, talking loudly. I sat right in front of them. The conversation went something like this:

"No one likes me."

"Your right. Oh no, your mother does"

"I'm gonna try to get you angry at me, ok?"

"Yeah."

"I got an old lady angry at me the other day 'cos I put my feet on the chair"

A few minutes later another thread to the conversation:

"You know when you smoke crack it takes, like, 20 minutes, and then you just really don't wanna do anything."

"yeah?"

"What would happen if there were no girls on this planet? I think we'd be humping our sheets."

"No, we'd be gay."

"Nah, we wouldn't. Would we still like be horney? And then we wouldn't be able to, like, reproduce."

"That a pretty big word."

"Yeah"

I figured they didn't see me or anything. I was pretty invisible to them, and I was trying hard not to laugh out loud or anything.

Yesterday I had a phone conversation with a local Bank Mizrachi telephone customer service agent. They're pretty invisible. You don't see these agents, right? So I needed to find out which branch was open in Jerusalem on Wednesday. He rattles off the branches that are open and then says,

"The Geulah one is open today too..."

"OH! NO! I can't go there?"

He giggles over the phone. And I giggle.

"I'm not dressed properly, if you know what I mean. It's a Hareidi (ultra-orthodox) neighborhood. So I don't think I can go."

He giggles some more, and I giggle too. Nothing like telling an invisible man you're immodestly dressed.

When we finish the conversation, I thank him. He tells me: "kol tuv" (all the best)

I hang up.

I then grasped the fact that term "kol tuv" is a term mostly used by the ultra-orthodox, and I suddently realized that he was probably "one of them" (Bank Mizrachi hires many Ultra-Orthodox Jews), and here I was telling him how I was dressed, or rather undressed. Now I completely understand the giggles from this invisible man.