Conversation between a waitress and a customer, overheard in the Peter Pan restaurant at Narragansett and Belmont:

"Play-Doh? When you said Play- Doh, I thought Play-Doh! I don't use Play-Doh, it's Silly Putty I use."

"The stuff that comes in the plastic egg?"

"Otherwise they would be always wet. I'd have one infection after another. The doctor says it's because they never get a chance to dry out completely."

"But you wear a bathing cap."

"That doesn't help. I wear earplugs, but it's not enough."

"But Silly Putty in your ears, isn't that dangerous?"

"It works. The only thing, you can't forget it's there and use a blow dryer, it'll blast out your eardrums."

"But Silly Putty ..."

"I have to use something, I'm in the pool every day."

--Catherine Scherer

Overheard on a LaSalle Street bus:

The driver yells out "Gar-ta" for the Goethe Street stop. A middle-aged woman with shoulder-length blond hair and a fur coat looks around at her fellow passengers and remarks, "I've been riding this bus for 20 years and never once have I heard a CTA bus driver pronounce Goethe Street correctly. I studied German philosophy so it really irritates me when the bus drivers pronounce it as 'Goth-ee.'"

As the woman gets off the bus, the CTA driver replies, "Hey lady, we all ain't as dumb as we look."

--Eileen Pahl