Overheard at Masago

We're in our favorite Japanese restaurant in Morristown, New Jersey, Pam and I. Actually, it's not our favorite, but they have a special discount for customers who pay cash. But the food is pretty good.

Anyway, seated at the table next to us are four young ladies (based on something one of them says, we guess they are all about 25 or 26 years old), who are chattering throughout their meal.

As the evening unfolds, one of the young ladies begins to dominate -- utterly dominate -- the conversation with self-centered stories about how various relatives met their demise. Pam says that she thinks they are all nurses.

Anyway, the biggest chatterbox of the foursome feels it necessary to go into explicit detail about how grandpa died. How peaceful death is (her opinion). How grandpa was vomitting endlessly when the ambulance came for him. How he continued to wretch up his guts while in transit ... when he arrived at the hospital ... and, apparently, right up until his demise. Puking up (and she was very explicit and detail-oriented in her lengthy narrative on the subject) "brown, disgusting, sludge ... that kept coming up ... brown like chocolate ice cream...."

Ad infinitum about his expectorant and ejaculated digestive tract effluvium. She went on and on and on.

Meanwhile, Pam and I are trying  -- hope against all hope -- to enjoy the last tidbits of our Love Boat Platter. To enjoy yellow tail, and unagi roll and red snapper and uni.

But alas, this one gal just couldn't refrain from talk of death and vomit.

When not focused with laser-beam precision on the gory details of the exulpsive/explusing digestive efflugent contents of grand dad's upper GI, she alternated with disquisition on the behavior -- rather odd and unacceptable she opined -- of the priest administering extreme unction. "Isn't it against canon law and all that is godly and just for a priest to call himself 'Father Jesus [as in "hey zeus"]?'" she asked.

But alas, this interlude questioning the righteousness and rightfulness of a father named Jesus was not to last. No. Of course not.

Almost without missing a beat, she returned to the topic of boompa's upchuck; then, with a seamless segue, shifted the conversation to the "time that [her] heart began beating so fast that the doctor could feel it, too, merely by rest his hand warmly upon her heaving breasts [alright, that's a little poetic license with 'his hand on my chest']."

So, we moved quickly from the suffering of the paterfamilias to the suffering of the speaker as she intoned about the frightfulness of her idiopathic (and, in my humble opinion, idiotic) episode of tachycardia.

The question, one among many, that Pam and I batted about as we escaped this wretched monologue and wretching and rapid heartbeats was: "What about our suffering through your torrid fit of loggerhea? Haven't you done enough yet to destroy our enjoyment of this bountiful half-priced, payment in cash meal? Have you no mercy?"

This was followed by Pam insisting that "we will not come back here for at least two weeks, lest we encounter this woman again."