what's it to you?

I tried not to listen to their conversation by focusing my eyes on the words on the page in the book I was reading.  I thought if I really stared at them I would process them more deeply.  I squint my eyes and look sharply at each word as I pass through the lines on the page.  It is going to make me get lost in its wonder.  The words of this genius writer were going to finally come alive inside my brain.  It was only a matter of time before these words effect my whole brain.  If I just look deep enough into the black font on the page, each part of my brain will analyze the meaning at once.  Out of this will emerge the most thorough and accurate interpretation imaginable.  The resultant thoughts are the perfect mix of judging what's here and what's just in my mind.  I'll catch all the details and expound upon the argument the author is trying to make.  It isn't as easy as I make it seem to be such a good reader.  All of this would have happened if I hadn't been distracted by the conversation next to me.  They outnumbered me by 3:1 which made my weak attempts at self-talk an epic fail.  I even stole the word epic from their conversation.

I overheard one of them making a joke to his friends about whatever seemed to pop up in his head.  He decided to make a cyberspace joke about the availability of personal information about people we know on the Internet.  For that matter, the information is available for people we do not know, as well.  Anyway, the joke was to say to his friend sitting across from him at the table something like, "Jezebel, I saw on the Rhodes network that you declared your history major."  Then, instead of stopping the weird computer stalker lingo, he continued on, reading off statistics about him, like his phone number, address, residence, year, major, and full name.  It was actually really funny and it even sounds funny when I type it out, which is always a good sign.