Today's Story Brought To You By Planned Parenthood

Some things are just not funny. I won't drag us all down by naming them, but there are a few -- a very few -- things in the world that even I can't be irreverent toward.

I would have thought abortion was one of those things. But this morning, abortion became funny. Or, more accurately, the lack of one particular abortion became funny.

*Before I continue, a note. I do not care how you feel about abortion. I know exactly how I feel about it, and that seems like all I need to know on the matter. No one -- okay, no one who reads this crap, anyway -- cares.

As a writer, I eavesdrop. It's innate. I can't help it. I don't do it on purpose and if you give me enough dirty looks, I'll probably stop. If you get up and move to another table I definitely will, because I'm too lazy to pick up all my shit and move with you. It's not even that hard these days, eavesdropping. People have outlandishly personal conversations so loud they must want other people to hear them. Ride a New Jersey transit train some time. It. Will. Shock. You. In fact, I challenge you to spend an afternoon in any public place and not overhear the intimate details of a perfect stranger's life.

This one, though. This one was a doozy. Here is today's story.

Two kids -- probably late teens, early twenties; I'm of the age nowadays where that qualifies you as a kid, and also where I say things like nowadays -- caught my attention when she showed up to the coffee shop, a few minutes after him, looking nervous and guilty. Or maybe I was projecting. I was supposed to be working. He stood up quickly when she walked in and gave her a big, tight hug. By the time they settled back down into their chairs she had her arms wrapped protectively around her belly, he was clearly trying not to cry, and I wasn't trying at all to hide how enthralled I was.

He took her hands and asked her how she felt. She shrugged and I think she said "fine." Her head was down and I desperately wanted to ask her to tuck her hair behind her ears so it didn't block me out so much. I was afraid that might be overstepping my boundaries so I just scooted my chair closer instead.

"Man. I wish I coulda been there with you." Boy.
"Yeah. Well, my mom woulda freaked. Plus it seemed dumb for you to just sit in some waiting room." Girl. I'm noting -- taking actual notes at this point -- that Girl is not making eye contact with Boy.
"Did it hurt?" His earnestness was heartbreaking. And kind of hot, in a sensitive, emo way.
"Well... no." I'm suspicious of her, and not just because her sensitive, emo boyfriend is clearly too good for her. He's trying hard to get her to look at him. That hair is like the Iron Fucking Curtain. When he takes her by the chin and lifts her face gently, I am fairly sure I'm not the only one in the place who let out an audible "ohh." But I might've been. Mine was pretty loud.
"It kills me you had to go through this. I'm so sorry. We'll be more careful from now on. But it's all behind us now, right? It's over. I love you so much." Girl says nothing in response to this. Girl is an asshole.
"Girl?" Obviously, he doesn't call her Girl. I am protecting her, and protection is clearly something that has been lacking up to this point in her young, promiscuous life. By now, Boy is starting to sense something is off. Boy may be sensitive, but Boy is not too bright.
"Girl?" This time he says it with a little more insistence, and he's taken his hands off of hers. "It's over, right? I mean, you did it? You did do it, right? You went through with it, right?" Boy is less sensitive-seeming now, and more desperate. Angry desperate. Not hot.
"I tried."

I'm going to give you a few moments here to consider what you think might have been an appropriate second part of Girl's response.

I couldn't go through with it? Makes sense.
I realized I wanted to have your baby? Perfectly romantic.
I'm not morally comfortable with the lifelong ramifications to both my mental and emotional state, as well as my physical wellbeing, when it comes to making a decision of this magnitude? Seems a little lofty for this Girl, but feasible, I suppose.

Instead, she offered up this gem:

"It didn't take."

It didn't take. I missed the next few interchanges, my mind reeling to figure out what they're talking about. Clearly they weren't talking about what I thought they were talking about, right? Because "it didn't take" does not fit into the vernacular of what I thought they were talking about. All I could think was "Run, Boy, run." I tried so hard to think it into Boy's mind that I probably looked like I was trying to abort something of my own.

If they were characters, I would have to concern myself with all kinds of details at this point. Why did she change her mind? Did she ever intend to go through with it in the first place? How, exactly, does she plan on getting away with convincing him it's possible for this sort of thing to not take, like some feeble, failed attempt at a backyard garden? But they're not characters. Not my characters, anyway. And so they're going to have to sort their own shit out. I plan on going back to that coffee shop in about nine months, just to see how the story ends.