Understanding the Conversation

Bright blue sky, warm sunshine. Perfect day for a ride.

Dressed lightly with just a wind breaker to protect from the slight breeze, I avoid the potholes and sand on my routine journey.

As I notice several yard maintenance and home improvement parked with men in dirty t-shirts and baggy blue jeans discussing their plans, instructing their workers, or commenting on the mother in dark glasses pushing a stroller by, I listen to their words.

I do not understand the conversation. The words make no sense to me. Perhaps a different dialect or a foreign tongue, I can not understand a word or phrase of their conversation.

This happens several times on my ride and I wonder if there is anyone talking in a language I can understand.

Last night celebrating the holiday of beer consumption, the room was so noisy talking inches from one another was impossible to comprehend. Our mouths moved, when not slurping the sudsy potion in plastic cups, then we nodded like we understood what the other face had said. We yelled at one another to no avail and laughed when we thought it was appropriate.

Maybe there are times in life where you don't understand the conversation, due to lack of listening skills, ill-fated misconceptions, or waning attention spans.

At the end of my morning venture, a group of art students sat in the grass outside. Their instructor was walking among the groups of two or three talking loud enough for the spread out group of about two dozen to hear his voice. I paused to take a water break and listen. I don't remember going outside in high school art class, but we just drew on the cave walls back then.

The instructor was telling one young man to look at the entire tree, branches and trunk. "Fill the entire sheet of paper" he continued walking to the next group.

A small cluster of students were close to the fence, laughing and giggling in the sunshine. They looked happy to be outside, but not interesting in learning art. They were teenagers, surrounded by friends, with a little free time in the sun.

I understood their conversation without hearing a single word.