Ozark Coffee House

"Everything reminds her of rotting flesh." The guy sitting next to me here at my local coffee shop just said these words, and I am disturbed. From what I can gather, he is recalling, with journalistic accuracy, his wife's pregnancy, and birth to a friend. I am writing this in real-time as they speak about 3 feet away from where I am. One second, let me listen a bit more...

Okay, so his wife, just had a baby. She had COVID during her pregnancy. Wait, let me listen for a second....okay, so he came to the coffee shop today to get out of the house and get a little work done. The baby is starting to sleep now, but not enough. The wife is recovering well. she even played tennis the other day (which sounds like unnecessary hyperbole, but ok).

If you're wondering, yes, I am minding my own business, but they are speaking so loudly, I can't help but hear. Let me listen a little more...okay, the man's name is David; the gentleman he is speaking with is an insurance agent and they seem to have met before. This casual conversation is a reacquaintance.

Turns out, David is a financial planner. They are sharing contacts and skipping between pregnancy woes, insurance coverage, and the professional contacts they collectively know. Somewhere in between the greetings, David detailed the rough nature of his wife's pregnancy. How she caught COVID, lost her sense of smell and taste, then got her smell sense back, but then he said "everything she smells reminds her of rotting flesh." What the...?

Now, I'm trying to simply do my work, but his statement has drafted me into his conversation. My first question was, how is she so familiar with rotting flesh that she knows what smells like it? At this point, I feel like I'm in a secret filming of Ozark. I feel like I'm an extra on set, but no one told me.

The conversation took such weird turns that I decided to get up and go get a dirty chai latte with two shots of blonde espresso to refresh the taste in my own mouth. Geesh.

Here's the point. Some of the best writing you'll ever do is done by listening to others speak. The most provocative statements are not found in fiction but in truth. That said, I think I'll put my AirPods in now. Talk to you later.