Found Dialogue Friday: Men And Wires

Found Dialogue is a series of real conversations or monologues transcribed word for word. If I find myself witness to an interesting conversation or person, I’ll secretly pull out my iPhone voice memo app and record what’s happening. In an effort to study characters, human speech, and real life dialogue I transcribe these recordings word for word, punctuation for punctuation as I hear it. If it’s really interesting, I’ll publish a snippet here. Notice how rhythmic, poetic, and messy human interaction is. It so often has a “call and response” like a song or a sermon. We dramatize naturally. Enjoy.

(Moral and legal gray area— I never use real names and if I find I’m recording information that is incriminating in any way, I delete the voice memo and never publish).

What I like about this week’s entry is how these two men seem speak a foreign language. Unless you’ve spent some time rewiring your house you might not follow what they are talking about. But at the heart of it these are two guys trying to solve a problem using a set of short hand that makes perfect sense to them.

Men And Wires.

(Two men in their sixties. Driving.)

A. Yeah, but those just pop out.

B. What do you mean they pop out?

A. Uh…

B. Well, I see—

A. What ya, what ya need?

B. Well, one-ten, I need ya know, one-ten, so, I—

A. I know but what’s the breaker, uh…

B. Well, fifteen amp.

A. For a stove? Sure it’s not more than that?

B. No. Yeah, for, you know, fifteen amp is standard for, ah, regular gas stove, right? Cause everything is gas on—

A. Oh that’s right that’s right, I’m sorry, // yeah yeah yeah>

B. …Except the electronics.

A. —It’s the regular breaker yeah…

B. But, uh, actually its thirty amp thats on the— no, no, it’s fifty amp I think that’s on there now for the stove. It’s fifty amp.

A. Uhhhhh//hhhhhh…

B. So, I think what I’m gonna do is I’m just gonna— I’m gonna keep the wire in place but just take the breaker out and put a fifteen amp breaker on it, and just not use one of the wire leads.

A. Right, right. Uhhhh // hh >

B. And just—

A. -I was just gonna say you could probably double ging… the breaker is probably double ging >

B. Yeah it is.

A. —So if you just break that ing then you’ll have one, uhh… twenty-five. And what is it, forty?

B. No, it’s fifty actually.

A. Yeah, so it’s twenty and… mmm… twenty right? or twenty? that’s thirty… that’s uhhh… >

B. I don’t know.

A. Uh… that’s twenty five and twenty five…

B. I just thought I’d pull the breaker out // and put in a fifteen inch breaker.

A. Yeah, they just pop out. Yeah. They just pop out.

B. Cause I was thinking originally I was gonna leave the uh, the uh, you know the two-twenty in place. But I couldn’t do that. And just pull, pull the power off for the, the, you know, the plug and put a new plug in there so it’d have both right? But then the fifteen amp wouldn’t be protected.

A. But I think if you… uh… No I mean if you just use them on one leg I think it uses half of the—half of that breaker though.

B. But it’s still gonna be, fifteen amp it’s gonna be twenty-five amps then right?

A. Uh… (pause) Yeah, if it’s a uh… Yeah, if it’s a… // a… yeah… a single fifty, yeah.—

B. So I started a started reading— I started reading online— I was hoping that somebody made, uh.. an outlet that would have its own breaker on it, right?

A. Yeah.

B. And I couldn’t find one. But I did find this one that has a thermal, a thermal uh fuse on it, basically that a, uh… if it gets— if the wire gets too hot it senses heat on the, on the connection?

A. Yeah.

B. And it’ll it’ll break it.

A. Huh.

B. So I was thinking maybe I’d use that but then I decided that “screw it.”

A. No, you just pop the breaker out.

B. I’ll just pop the breaker out, I’ll put a fifteen amp breaker and I’ll just uh, I won’t— the wire I’ll keep in place but I just won’t use—

A. Yeah, just won’t use the uh…

B. Right. And so if somebody wants to change it back to two-twenty, the wire is there.

A. Yeah.

(long pause)

A. Unless you needed another plug. You could use that, run that other wire up and have another plug there.

B. What do you mean have two plugs back there?

A. Uh, no, you know you need another plug just over there on the counter.

B. No. // I got, I got plenty of plugs there.

A. Okay, okay.

B. Actually there’s a plug on the other side of it I was thinking of trying to figure out how to take the power off of that one, one of those >

A. Uh…

B. —but that’d be a pain in the ass you know drywall and everything.

A. Yeah, if you already got that one there…

B. So yeah, I’ll just convert that one over to a uh… one ten plug.

A. Yeah, that’s easy enough.