New Best Friend

I left the office for about an hour today to go take a couple of books back to the library. On the way, a guy about my age yelled from about 20 yards behind me "Hey man." After the second yell I turned around to notice that he was running up to me. We exchanged pleasantries, then he asked if I was going to the library. I answered yes and he said "sweet, we'll walk together."

I was okay with that. Boy, am I glad I didn't follow my instinct and say I had to make a stop in a store first...this was one of the more interesting chats I've had in a while.

I'll try to recreate parts of the convo for you. Well, the parts that are postable. I'll change some language - keep it clean you know...

Dude: I just got off work (He works at Sizzler - cheap steakhouse)
Adam: Oh, I am working now.
Dude: Do you make deliveries?
Adam: (Baffled)Sorry?
Dude: Your bag. (A man purse - sometimes called a messenger bag)
Adam: Oh, no I work at Crossroads Urban Center.
Dude: Oh, so are you in college too?
Adam: No, I've graduated.
Dude: Nice, I'm in acting school now - I'm going to be an actor
Adam: Oh, that's cool - what do you want to do with it when you're done?
Dude: Act.
Adam: I mean, like, what genre: movies, theatre...
Dude: Oh, movies and commercials. I don't like the theatre, cause I don't like to sing
Adam: Well, not all theatre productions are musicals. There is just plain stage theatre without the music.
Dude: Yeah, but those are called plays. I don't want to do them neither.
Adam: (Reeking sarcasm, but oddly he didn't pick up on it) Oh, my mistake.

Later in the conversation

Adam: I'm from Nashville
Dude: Nice, Nashville's cool.
Adam: Yeah, it is. But I like Salt Lake City too.
Dude: Yeah, theres lots of hot girls here. (You can't tell it from the parts I'm posting but roughly 90% of his words dealt with girls).
Adam: Yeah, I have noticed some well put together girls.
Dude: But most of them are Mormon. They won't date people who ain't mormon. Not that I know of.
Adam: Yeah, that's what I hear.
Dude: But some of them are freaks. (I have debated whether I should put this line in here. I still don't know if I should. He said this, or a variation of this, explicitly, at least a dozen times in the 10 minute walk to the library, so I feel it belongs...but this is a family blog - g-rated. So, I don't know...The beauty in the statement is that he has already said he doesn't know of a mormon girl who will date/whatever non-mormons, but then claims to know this detail. Strange...

Later in the conversation

Dude: Do you burn?
Adam: I'm sorry? (I didn't know what this meant. I'm not hip I guess. But thinking later I thought the term sounded somewhat familiar from somewhere. Several hours of thinking - well, not straight thinking - led me to remember during a advocacy group board meeting that someone asked one of my favorite sportswriters -Clay Travis- the same question and he, too was perplexed - weird huh?
Dude: Do you want drugs.
Adam: Oh, no thanks...
Dude: Oh, that's good. There aren't too many in Salt Lake.
Adam: (Confused, contemplating faking a phone call) Yeah, that's good.

So...once again, I meet people who make writing about them fun.