Overheard Conversation II

The setting:  A campus computer lab
The speakers:  Two young men between 22-25

Young man 1(ym1):  No look at this. . .
Young man2(ym2):  What?
Ym1:  Another girl from my high school
Ym2:  Man
Ym1:  I know.  She got fat!  (chortles)
Ym2 (laughs)
Ym1:  She had a cute face back in high school.  Now she’s fat.
Ym2 (laughs)
Ym1:  They all blew up.  Every girl that I dated from high school apparently blew up.  (laughing)
Ym2: wow.
Ym1:  I’m serious.  The only one who hasn’t blown up is the blonde I cheated on. (laughs)

And so it continued, as the two young men laughed and made disparaging comments about the weight of young women.  I am even more of a social action coward since Overheard Conversation I.  I can no longer articulate what I would even want to say.  I just sat at my own computer and pretended not to hear.  Worse, I did hear, and throughout the day, I questioned my own annoyance at this conversation.  This type of conversation seems so much more normal to me than it did a year ago.  I reflect, again, on whether I am too judgmental.  I also reflect again on the challenge of ‘disrupting the commonplace’ outside of the relative safety of the classroom community.