We were going back to work from a lunch of hamburgers and fries. I was telling a story of someone I once knew who had abruptly quit his job and gone to work somewhere else. The economy had been bad. There were funding problems. And eventually other people started leaving, too.
“He must have seen the writing on the wall,” I said.
Camille asked, “What does writing on the wall mean?”
I glanced over at her to see if she was messing with me. Then I looked in the rear view mirror at Kyle.
“What… Is that an old expression!?” I asked him, stupefied that I might be using a phrase that their generation no longer uses —no longer even understands.
“Well,” he said. “It’s kind of an old expression.” And then he explained to Camille what the expression meant as I turned left at the light and lamented my plight.