Spent 3 hours at a diner in Detroit and overheard the best dialogue

I was sitting at a booth at the Old Miami last Saturday, just nursing a cup of coffee and people watching. Two old guys at the counter were talking about a poker game from 1987 like it happened yesterday. One guy said "you folded queens on the river, Frank, and I still don't forgive you for it." The way they talked, the pauses, the hand gestures - it was better than half the scenes I've tried to write. I pulled out my notepad and scribbled down as much as I could without being obvious. Anyone else find better material from eavesdropping than from prompts online?

2 comments

2 Comments

carter.julia10d ago

Wait, you wrote while they were still there? Like just pulled out a notebook in the middle of the diner and started scribbling? That's bold. I would've been so scared they'd catch me and think I was a creep or something. But that line about the queens on the river is gold, pure gold. I can hear the way Frank probably just grumbled into his coffee after that. Man, I bet the whole place got real quiet for a second after he said that.

anthony_lane559d ago

Oh man, you gotta remember it was a little different than that. They didn't just go dead quiet, there was this low rumble of laughter from a couple of the old guys at the counter first, then Frank just sort of shook his head and took a long sip of his coffee. And I wasn't scribbling the whole time, I just jotted down that river line on a napkin while they were still arguing about the poker game from two days before. The notebook came out later, after they'd both left and I was just sitting there finishing my pie. But you're right about the boldness part, I felt like a real weirdo for a solid minute there.