When I first met Angela, she spoke only in nonsense words, and I think that I might have been better off if things had just stayed that way. Instead, I helped her break out of her shell and begin to talk in human-speak, which lead to me seeing just how incredibly negative someone could be. When I pick up my phone and say "hello?" the correct response is not "MY HAMSTER DIED."
I know it's upsetting when a beloved pet dies, but it's probably best not to lead with that. If you feel you must tell someone, then it likely shouldn't be the guy that's clearly been avoiding your calls due to your negativity.
Angela had the ability to take any conversation that you were having and make it all about her. She was also able to sour the mood of anything being said by introducing some horribly depressing aspect of the topic that you probably would never have considered had she not brought it into play. In one incident that I remember this happening, I was trapped in a dead-end conversation with Chelsea, trying my damndest to get away, and she was rambling on about how dolphins were so amazing and majestic and...blah-blah-blah. Chelsea was talking non-stop about how, if she could be any animal, she would choose to be the dolphin, "they're so smart and wonderful," the "jokers of the sea and everyone loves them!"
Angela had wandered up while this conversation was going on, and it's quite possible that she only said this because she disliked Chelsea even more than I did, but she abruptly cut Chelsea off mid-sentence and said "you know that dolphins are rapists?" I sometimes interject this into random conversations just to see the reactions. Chelsea was drawing a blank and found no words to screech, so Angela continued: "when the male wants to mate, he'll choose his female and deny her sleep and food until she allows him to rape her."
The best that Chelsea could offer at this point was "...um..." to which Angela responded "and it's sometimes a group-thing, too. They'll kidnap the female from her family and herd her around for months at a time, gang-raping her as they please. So, no, you probably wouldn't enjoy being a dolphin." This is the one time that I enjoyed her abilities.
Normally her observations would have little to do with what was actually being said, and really just a way for her to turn the conversation into whatever it is that she wanted to be talking about at that moment, even if she hadn't been a part of it. Where Grace's presence had made me consider staying in community college, Angela's presence had the opposite effect.
Grace and I had been sitting in an open-area talking about one of the stories that we had read in class, and we were deep in conversation when Angela sat down beside us, never having met Grace before, and started talking over us. I had been saying something, but sort of petered off when I realized that Angela was just going to keep talking over me anyway. I waited for Angela to finish complaining about whatever was on her mind, and said "Angela, this is Grace. We were just discussing a story we'd read in class. Have you ever read [insert random title here]?" Angela turned to Grace, as though she hadn't noticed her there, and said "oh, hi," then turned back to me and asked me something about Mount St. Helens erupting and how depressing it would be if we "went completely Pompeii."
Have I mentioned that I really missed when she only meowed?
Angela was extremely good at killing the mood in any situation, which I'm sure her current husband is appreciative of, and I think she would've made a really good hostage negotiator, if only because she would have made everyone in that situation so confused that they would be unable to continue murdering people.
This isn't to say that Angela was a completely negative person, though I'm fairly confident that she was about 90% bile. She did have her good days, and I could appreciate how much she loved feeding ducks. Every Sunday after church she would drive down to the duck pond and feed bread crumbs to ducks for two hours, then go home and do homework. This fact was news to me until she brought it up one day when I was, once more, in conversation with Grace.
Grace and I had been sitting in the same place as before, when Angela came and sat down with us, talking over us about how much fun she had had feeding the ducks. Since the last incident, where I had to apologise to Grace for Angela's social-retardation, Grace had come to...dislike Angela. I'm actually pretty sure that these were the only two times that they two of them had had any contact with one another, but it seemed like enough for the both of them. As Angela continued on about the ducks, and the bread, and how I should go with her the next time because it was just so much fun, Grace finally snapped and cut her off.
"That kills the ducks, you know." Angela stopped dead, I don't think she had ever had anyone use her own tactics on her before. "The bread expands in their stomachs, and when they take flight their stomachs burst." I'm not sure how true this statement was, but it shut Angela up for the rest of the day as she considered how many ducklings she had murdered through the years.
...I should probably blame Grace for killing the one positive thing that Angela ever spoke about.
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