The Laughing Fools :: Personal Narrative Emotions Feelings Essays

The Laughing Fools I just started my new job working as a bartender in this local jazz club. Not knowing a person in the place, I thought that I would ease-drop on a conversation that these two men were engaged in, just so I could get to know the costumers better. The conversation was being lead by Lee and the other man, Mike, was prompting him to go on with the story. The story was about an incident that Lee had when he was a small boy with a paper route and his dog was killed. It was a sad story, I thought , but the men just laughed. The reason they laughed I have never figured out, now I am trying to understand the two men. Working at the jazz joint , I see some rather strange things. Mike and Lee come in about once a week. I have listened to Lee and Mike have other discussions, although ease-dropping is not an easy task to do when working. The last time I listened in on uninvited was a conversation on Lee's mother. Lee talked how his mother did everything for him, she would cook his diner, do his laundry, clean his house and buy his groceries. She did all this for him, when he was moved out of her house and supposedly "on his own." Lee did not like his mother doing all this for him, but he never told her that he didn' t want her to keep doing the domestics around his house. She kept on doing things like that for her son, thinking that she was helping out. Eventually, Lee came to resent his mother for all that she did for him and as time passed he expected more from her. He did not tell her that she was interrupting his life. Lee's mother became ill. She had a long, painful battle with a disease, I am n ot sure which one, for I was only ease-dropping. As time passed she became worse. Lee's mother could not do all the things that she had done before, this was not good for Lee, for he had become dependent on one person and he disliked her for that. Finally she died. At the end of the story the two men were again laughing. This really bothered me. I was trying of something to say because it was just like the story with the dog, it had a sad ending with the same reaction of both Lee and Mike, they laughed.