I recently called my landlord about my heater not working, and today a guy came by to fix it. To my embarrassment, it was just the circuit breaker...aka, it wasn't flipped on. Not my brightest moment (I blame finals - I'm usually not THAT stupid).
Anyway, the guy decides to redo the screws in the heater cover because they had been put in wonky. I go downstairs because he wants to show me how to use the heater (I guess he thought I was too dumb to figure it out since flipping the circuit breaker hadn't crossed my mind). He asks me if I go the local university, I say yes, and then he decides to stand and talk to me about his life for 30 MINUTES.
What I learned about him (all about his life except his name...):
- his son got a degree but decided he really wanted to be in the army
- his daughter died of lupus and left behind a kid
- the kid's father is a douche who's currently in jail for way too many speeding tickets
- he doesn't like the idea of hunting
- you can do anything in America, as opposed to Mexico
- his son in the army is soon to be a sergeant and is going to Iraq
And since I have Bleeding Heart Syndrome™, I didn't have the heart to tell him to leave. I don't mind the occasional anecdote, but being told one's life story for a half hour, unprompted, is...weird. Finally when I got up off the couch (shouldn't have sat down!) he got the hint and left.
So yeah, I don't know when I became a therapist, but apparently somebody thought I was one!
