The Nonstop Pie-Hole

 

Even Joan Cusack wouldn't know what to do. 

As a Valentine's date, the Husband took Cookie out for a meal. 

We were seated, the table next to us was empty, and the table to my right was a man, about sixty-something who smiled when we were seated. 

About five minutes later, while we gazed at the menu, his dinner companion arrived. She was well dressed, almost stylish, but once she was seated, her mouth kicked into gear. 

Now, Cookie and the Husband were at a modern, nice dining location. The hum of the people talking was semi-loud because people operating restaurants think that a vibrant atmosphere means that the noise level should be loud enough that when using your inside voice you need to lean forward so the person seat on the other side of the duece top can nearly hear you.

The husband and I were seated next to these two for one hour and twenty minutes, and of that time, her mouth was in gear for an hour and fifteen.  A very LOUD hour and fifteen.

She only stopped talking long enough to throw some food into her piehole or take a quick sip of her Moscow Mule. 

And her constant kvetching wasn't anything worth listening in on.  There was nothing juicy, no complaints about food, politics, not even sex or gossip. 

Nope. Her mouth ran nonstop complaining about employees and coworkers, and their inability to follow or communicate their processing of workplace processes. 

Honest to Gawd people.  It was as if she picked up an abandoned unfunny script for the final episode of Seinfeld.  

And, she was loud.

AND dear reader, I kid you not, this came out of her mouth: 

"I asked her to explain her process for processing the required process to reach the outcome assigned to her, and she couldn't! Can you believe that?"

I leaned into the husband and said "Not explain her process? That takes some nerve."

At one point, her dinner companion took one of the few moments in which is was sipping her drink or chewing her meal and started to say "Well, being Swiss..." and she plugged that leak in the conversational dyke faster than the little Dutch boy in the child's story. 

"Then you know what I know about the importance of established processes..." and with that, she was off to the races again. 

We finished our meals, listening to nagging neh, nehneh, neh, wash rinse and repeat. 

When we waited for the check the piehole was in fine form, with process this, and process that, process, process, blah, blah, blah, process!

When we left, the husband had a rager of a headache.  "How did she even breathe?"

"I would have recommended a career as an auctioneer."

And I swear that while watching Find Your Roots, I started mumbling to the TV demanding that Skip Gates show us his researcher's processes when the husband said "You know those processes better than Dr. Gates."

To clear our minds, the Husband put on an episode of All Creatures Great and Small, which settled us down.  

Instead, our conversation turned to a favorite topic of mine, Helen's massive hair, which deserves its own paycheck and representation. 

No matter how bad something is, Helen's hair can always divert my attention. 

Last night in my dreams I remade the Sandra Bullock film "Speed", only this time, the heroine was told by some malevolent being that if she stopped talking about processes for more than thirty seconds, then bad things would befall her.  

How did the dream end?

I have no idea, I left the theater with Helen's hair before the resolution and then woke up.