Anger issues at Barnes and Noble

Anger is the theme here at the B and N cafe this lunchtime.

Three year old boy with his new stuffed dinosuar:  Why is he angry, mommy?

Mother:  He's a T-rex.  T-rexes are just angry.

At the table next to me three older women are threatening to start a tontine.  They're all going to try to outlive each other.  Whichever one lives longest gets bragging rights on the others.

Youngest woman to the oldest who may be her mother:  If you live to a hundred, I'm going to a hundred and ten.

Other woman who appears to be the oldest's younger sister to her niece:  If you live to a hundred and ten, she'll live to a hundred and twenty just to spite you.

The time line is confused here.  They're talking as if they're all the same age.  They also seem to regard death as a game like dodge ball.  If you get hit you go to the sidelines where you have to watch the survivors having fun without you.

Now the daughter is complaining that her mother stole a sip from her mocha latte when she wasn't looking.

Daughter:  You did that just to get your germs all over it, didn't you?

Mother:  I did.

Daughter:  You wanted to give me your germs.

Mother:  Of course.

Aunt:  I'll bet she spit in it just to make sure.

Daughter:  I'm sure she did.

And they all laugh.  They're having fun.  This is their idea of a good time.  Three elderly white women playing the dozens.

Comments

[Kevin Wolf]

I had forgotten the word tontine and can't remember the last time I ran into it. Maybe one of the Sherlock Holmes stories has a plot involving a tontine?

[Mike Schilling]

M*A*S*H's Colonel Potter was the last survivor of a tontine. (IIRC, the others were his WWI buddies.)

P. G. Wodehouse's _The Butler Did it_ (AKA _Something Fishy_) also had a tontine.

I'm sure there have been others, particularly as sitcom plots.

[Joshua Merrill]

One tontine that showed up in pop culture is in the Simpsons episode "The Curse of the Flying Hellfish." Grandpa Simpson and Mr. Burns formed it with the other members of their WWII battalion to decide "who gets to keep all them purty pictures."