have a dirty secret. I listen to conversations. I listen to private conversations. In restaurants, on the bus, on the street–you name it. If it’s in earshot, I’m listening. I can’t help it.
Okay. I can help it. I just don’t want to. And occasionally–like tonight–I hear things that make me want to jump up and shake the person in question. Tonight, I heard a girl who insisted, rather vociferously, that the American fascination with all things Japanese is just about sex. The rationale is one I won’t repeat here, but the person made the assertion that (1) the fascination with anime (she meant “manga,” incidentally, since she was talking about print cartoons) was all about pedophilia; (2) if Americans really were interested in Japanese culture, they’d understand that Japanese culture was all about death, witness their preoccupation with suicide; and (3) you didn’t see anyone interested in samurai culture.
Mr. Milan had to forcibly restrain me from getting up out of my seat to beat her over the head with my soup bowl. If I’d been talking to her, I would have scoffed in her face. The problem? I wasn’t talking to her. I don’t even know her. I was just overhearing her commentary. (It didn’t help that it feels like it’s 4 AM here.)
So . . . . We’re all authors. Do you ever listen in on conversations? What’s the most egregious thing you’ve ever overheard, and what (if anything) did you do about it?
July 3rd, 2007 at 4:19 pm
When I was taking writing classes the students were actually encouraged to evesdrop as part of learning how to do dialogue and characterization.
I don’t know about egregious, but I once evesdropped on an extended discussion of a young woman’s drunken evening. It left an impression.
The only time I felt compelled to act was when I was leaving a pizza parlor and a man knocked his teanage daughter off her feet for having said she didn’t want to be there. I was an inch away from slugging him.
Alice
July 3rd, 2007 at 4:34 pm
I listen in on conversations all the time. For one thing, I find people fascinating, and this gives me a window into understanding how they think. But I also have slightly above average hearing, so sometimes it’s hard NOT to hear what people are saying, even when they think nobody can hear them. (I once had a coworker whose hearing was so amazingly good that we all checked with her when we wanted to know who the boss had in his office and what was going down. She was off the charts.)
Two corollaries to this are my ability to read upside down at about 80% of normal speed and the onset of farsightedness that hit when I turned 30. Basically, this means I can read stuff on people’s monitors when it seems like I should be too far away, and I can easily skim papers that are pointed in the opposite direction on someone’s desk. I have to FORCE myself not to do this, but I sometimes do it without even thinking about it.
I haven’t read or heard anything as egregious as you or Alice described, but there have been a few occasions where I picked up on stuff that someone else definitely wouldn’t have wanted me to know about.
July 4th, 2007 at 11:41 am
I listen, too. The hard thing for me is not laughing and giving it all away.