Spa Talk: Cell phone edition

Sometimes, when you are sitting in a jacuzzi with other people, they engage in a personal conversation, and you have to pretend you can't hear it. But there is a worse scenario, and that is when you are sitting in a jacuzzi and someone is having a very personal conversation on his or her cell phone. You are three feet away, they are shouting into the phone (because they have AT&T), and you have to ignore the whole thing.

Tonight, such an event took place, and I learned all about a 19-year-old girl. A few things about 19-year-old girls in general:

• The word "like" is used in lieu of silence.
• Something is never just something, it is always "totally" something.
• Every sentence ends with the words, "and stuff."

Because of these lexicographic idiosyncrasies, I find it difficult to take 19-year-old girls seriously. Imagine Albert Einstein as a 19-year-old girl ("E like totally equals like M like C like squared and stuff").

This 19-year-old girl had two cell phone conversations in front of me, first talking on the phone to someone named Heather. She and Heather like totally related and stuff (once you fall into the speech pattern, it is like so totally hard to get out of and stuff). And there was a good reason they related so well: They were related. Heather was the girl's mother. And Heather so totally "got" her daughter. They both had tumultuous teenage years, doing drugs, drinking copious amounts of alcohol, and having wicked mad amounts of sex. This girl and Heather had a lot in common. So much so that the girl couldn't wait to hang up the phone so she could call her mother and tell her all about it.

This confused me for a few moments. Wait for it... let it happen... yes. You got it. The 19-year-old girl was adopted. Heather was the biological mother, and the two were having their second conversation ever while I was sitting in a jacuzzi trying to relax. But then the 19-year-old girl decided to call her mother and share the totally awesome news that the biological mother was totally cool. Because there is nothing a mother (I won't call her an "adoptive mother" or any such nonsense... you raise a child, you are that child's mother) wants to hear more than being told you are inferior to a drugged up, liquored up whore.

Not only did the 19-year-old girl have the lack of tact to have two very personal and private conversations in front of a total stranger in a jacuzzi, but in one of those conversations, the 19-year-old girl couldn't comprehend why her mother was having a hysterical crying jag. After all, the girl was calling to tell her mother the good news that she had finally found someone she could talk to and share things with. The girl could not understand why her mother couldn't just be happy for her.

Suffice it to say, the jacuzzi was not very relaxing tonight.