A geek and a dinosaur

One of my ex-colleagues and I chat a lot about non-work stuff, which is somehow work-related. Maketh any sense? Like “this dadgum proposal is delaying my vacation”. Or, “my boyfriend’s in town for the weekend, and I’ll be spending the Saturday canoodling with my financial model. FML!” (Explanation needed: The second example is totally her statement. Not mine. I don’t have a boyfriend. I have a husband. And no, his name is not “financial model”)

As the intelligent amongst you have possibly Byomkesh-ed by now, the poor ex-colleague is juggling a relationship and work that shall set all of us free one day – the death way. So there’s a lot of “my boyfriend this” “my boyfriend that”. But one day, she mentioned the name of the boyfriend. I was like “huh? who?” She went “Oh, that’s my boyfriend’s name”. I replied, “Yeah, I guessed. What was the NAME again?” And then she said this name that I knew! Someone I knew!

The guy was one of the most notorious ones in my math coaching class during my college years. (It’s only got to be a BIG coincidence, that he is the third person from that class I have met in the span of the last 3 months, by accident). He cracked sexist jokes all the time, and I was a die-hard feminist who had a problem with everyone and their uncles. Naturally, if we were to meet again today, there’d be no love lost. But of course, 7 years have got to make a difference. I can see now that he used to only be joking. And I was quite sure that he’d be able to see that I’m not a man-hater.. well, in case not, on the safe side, I’d carry a knife 😀

Anyway, I told this girl that I knew him – and a couple of good things I remembered from those days (very tough task, that).

One day I run into the two of them. We say hi-how-are-you-long-time and I tell them one ridiculous but funny story of our then-teacher. We all laugh. And then he says this: “I don’t remember much from that class.” I am quite relieved that the knife was going to go unused after all. And then he continues: “Only that you were always the one in the last row arguing with someone, or with your arm raised saying “Sir, I have a question…” JUST when everyone else wanted to pack up and leave. (nonchalant) haha.”

I died. End of story.

The other day, I wrote a long scarily-sounding-like-my-mother kind of Gtalk message to my brother, warning him to NOT do something or else…! He replies saying “R u crazy? I’ll neva do dat. Now go. I hv wrk, unlike u.” I was furious. I reply with “What the hell do you mean you’ll anyway do it? You don’t know who I am. I’m calling papa.” I get a very undeserving “You dinosaur! neva is “never”, not “anyway”. Jobless idiot.”

There IS such a thing as generation gap, isn’t there? And there is NO such thing as respecting your elders, is there?