Throw-Aways

I heard that word today.  Throw-Aways.  It came from a woman I overheard in a café.  I was not intentionally eavesdropping, though sometimes I have been known to drop eaves in a manner most shameless!  Where did that word, eavesdropping come from, by the way?  I shall ask Uncle Google.  He knows everything!

early 17th century: back-formation from eavesdropper (late Middle English) ‘a person who listens from under the eaves,’ from the obsolete noun eavesdrop ‘the ground onto which water drips from the eaves,’ probably from Old Norse upsardropi, from ups ‘eaves’ + dropi ‘a drop.’

So there it is folks.  It was hard not to hear what this woman was blathering about.  She had quite a loud voice and when she came to join her friend at the next table I kind of dreaded losing the lovely peace and quiet I'd been enjoying over the last hour while working on a drawing.  I heard her friend mention that he had been a vegetarian for the last six months so I politely chimed in (Pardon me for eavesdropping, but as a vegetarian for the last twenty years and more I would concur that meat is gross."  It was clear that they did not exactly appreciate hearing from me so I left them alone after that, not being one to put my foot where it isn't welcome.  It was just as well.  She seemed like quite an awful person.  First bragging about being a playwright (and maybe she is and she might even be good at it, or at least famous)  But it was her tone: loud, self-centred, a likely narcissist.  And the way she was so arrogantly complaining that not one single man she has been meeting is worth more than a fifteen minute screening visit.  She complained that they are all divorce casualties, with baggage.  Other people's "throw-aways."  I tried to imagine the experience of any one of those prospective suitors might have had sitting down in a coffee shop with this piece of work for the first and only time.  And then I started to understand why this woman has trouble finding a suitable man and why she is likely to spend the rest of her life married  monogamously to her Magic Wand vibrator.

She was not what I would call anything near attractive.  She was loud, and seemed not very concerned about other people's feelings.  She appeared to have a level of expectation that could be charitably termed as being unrealistic.  She was a nasty, rude, frightening bitch.  A narcissist.

I am also persuaded to believe that she herself was once someone else's throw away.  You know the game: reject before you get rejected.  She looks like she has logged quite a few years experience.  What don't kill you makes you strong.  And frightening.

It has been a rather pleasant day otherwise, apart from the crow that dive bombed me today and knocked me on the top of my head.  So it's open season on humans again.  By the same token I had an enjoyable chat with a fellow in a different café this morning.  And with a young woman on the bus on my way home.  It has been a decent day altogether and most strangers are actually very pleasant and quite lovely when you give them a chance.  Maybe even the nasty man-rejecter.

We're all throw-aways really, Gentle Reader.  And shouldn't that be all the more reason for being kind?