Yesterday afternoon. I was called out by a woman for not paying attention to her on the telephone.

Her: “What are you doing? Are you reading something?”
Me: “Huh? No, no, no. I’m listening.” [translation: yes, I was reading a book.]

In my own defense, she was complaining about some other woman at her work. I’m not one hundred percent on what her complaint was, exactly. I was reading a book, after all. I remember something about feelings not being considered and her throwing the word ‘bitch’ around about. Yadda yadda yadda... an hour going by... yadda yadda yadda. I do remember at one point saying, “It doesn’t really sound like a big deal to me. Why don’t you just let it go?”

I distinctly remember her not liking that.

Now, I understand significant others are duty bound to listen to this stuff and feign interest, learn key names and drop noncommittal ambiguous statements of support in what I guess what some people would consider conversations. I can also see how someone who had some interest in being a significant other to a particular fairer individual might be able to muster enough interest to actually listen to the details of such conversations and make the proper statements at the proper times, but that’s not what is going on between this individual and myself.

Besides, I’m not really significant other material anyway. I’ve pretty much come to terms with that at this point of my life. So, seeing how I’m not a significant other, a perspective significant other or even a human being psychologically capable of significant otherhood, shouldn’t I receive some sort of a credit or charter that states that I am absolved from having to listen to a woman complain about work or her friends/enemies (I can never tell the difference) or her feelings or whatever for four hours at a stretch?

Later in the conversation, I think around page # 128, she said she was bored and asked me what I was going to do that night. “Why?” I asked, “Do you want to catch a movie or something?”

“No,” she replied, “I want to go out and check out the President Day sales.”

“??????”

“Yeah,” she continued, “I’m going to go now. I’ll give you a call later when I get back from the mall. Maybe we can hang out or something”

“All right, I’ll talk to you later.”

“Bye.”

She never called me back last night. Odd?