Freedom from Freedom of Speech

A few days ago, I was having dinner in a fast food joint. While enjoying my food, I could not help but overhear two students talking about God-knows-what.

I really didn’t care what the hell they were talking about but it’s just one of those things in life that you want to ignore, but can’t.

Both were probably about 18 or 19 years old. It was a guy and a girl and they were in their school pajamas. I didn’t think that they were a couple since they didn’t look like one. Not that I wanted to know.

It seems that the girl had a problem in school and the guy, his friend, was trying to tell her that he was right here and that she shouldn’t care about what other people were saying about her. Not that I wanted to know that either.

Of course, I find that charming that friends help each other out. But that’s personal business that I don’t want to know… nor hear.

It’s like that one time when I was in the LRT cabin and a middle aged lady pulled out her cellphone and screamed “Hello” like it was her house. Everybody inside could hear her conversation about visiting the dead and what time she would drop by. I know it’s not her fault and it may have been a force of habit but these public displays of personal conversations just creeps me out.

The guy’s voice was so loud that I was wondering if he meant for others to hear their – or more specifically – his conversation.

If you play DOTA, then you’ve probably heard a booming voice screaming “DOMINATING!” when a player is killing off everybody else on the screen. This guy was practically DOMINATING (insert voice over) the conversation and it was trespassing my private (sound) space.

Now this would have been perfectly normal but what irritated my ears (and therefore me) was that he kept on speaking in English even though the girl was speaking to him in Tagalog. I personally find that off. Are they congregating in some sort of Tower of Babel ritual?

The only saving grace was that the guy had quite a good diction. Somehow though, there was something wrong with his choice of words. He even had a lot of motherhood statements that were probably plagiarized from self-help books. I just wish I had jot down some of his statements.

I have an odd quirk of writing down the mangled words, tortured phrases, cleverly stupid statements, and misquotes that people say.

After torturing my ears for a couple of minutes, I realized that good diction can cover up for bad choice of words. Unfortunately, if you are the speaker in front of an intelligent audience, idiocy can’t be masked. They’ll see through you like a glass ceiling.

This isn’t the first time I had my personal space violated. Coincidentally, that particular instance happened to me in a fast food joint also. Life can be a bore, but riding the public transport, observing people in restaurants, and current events do make for good copy every so often.