without headphones

You meet all sorts of people when traveling by bus, especially around the holidays. I listened to and joined in on several conversations with other travelers during my trip.

There was the couple with the nine month old baby who were on their way to the wife's mother's house where their nine year old twin girls who they haven't seen in four years lived. There was the couple at Subway, the husband who spoke for fifteen minutes straight about his life as a medic in the army and then a nurse at nursing homes and his German wife who said nothing at all. Then there were the two college students playing Monopoly while waiting for their bus to Cincinnati. And lastly, there were the two homeless guys discussing how much they had taken in for the day and whether to spend it on a McDonald's coffee or a newspaper.

A lot of people these days put on their headphones and turn on their mp3 players, blocking out all of the interesting things people say and excluding themselves from the opportunity of random conversations. It's a shame, really, because spontaneous life is so much more entertaining than prerecorded music.