Eavesdropper shockers!

We have all, from time to time, listened in on other people's conversations. Some people talk so loud that it is impossible not to overhear just what they are saying to each other.

My wife and I have just spent a few days on the East coast of Yorkshire. While sitting in a pub by the sea after a long day walking, we were both communing quietly with our own thoughts. At the table across from where we were sitting were a woman and two men. One of the men had a dog with him and after finishing his drink he turned to the woman, who turned out to be his wife, and said, “I'll take the dog home and meet you two up at the pub up the road.” He then promptly stood up and left the pub with his faithful hound at his side. He had no sooner left the pub when the other man turned to the woman and said, “I miss you so much, can we not drug him again so we spend the night together?” The woman told him to behave himself and to be patient, then they both left the pub! Both my wife and I turned to each other not believing what we had just heard. 

“Did he say what I thought he said?” asked my wife, more than a little concerned. 

“If you thought he was talking about drugging the other guy so he could play hide the sausage with his wife, then yes!” I replied, also a little concerned. 

My wife then smiled, shrugged her shoulders and said, “I don't think they were serious, I think they were just messing.” We then did the very British thing of not getting involved.

Many years ago, I was on a bus minding my own business while two old ladies chatted away to each other behind where I was sitting. Then one of the old dears turned to the other and whispered, “He wont tell me where he's buried her.” They both then fell silent. This drove me mad, thinking that I had stumbled upon a murder plot!

Once, while sitting in a cafe, trying to write a piece of work that was supposed to have been written a month before (story of my life) a young woman at a table across from me spoke to someone on her mobile phone.

“I've never seen one that big before. He begged me to sit on it last night and it just made my legs go funny!” is what she said to the person on the other end of the phone, then added, “I know, he gets so excited about things that he can't control himself!” I stopped writing then, and instead, started listening at this point. I soon realised that this wasn't a piece of salacious gossip but just a mundane conversation when the woman added, “I told him that I hate those vibrating chairs, so why he bought one I just don't know!”.

That is the problem with eavesdropping, most of what is being said is quite boring and mundane: it just depends when you tune in to the conversation to make it interesting. Like this one. A woman talking to another woman in a doctor's surgery, just out of the line of vision of my wife, said, "I can't put up with it any more, he keeps biting my nipples, they have started to bleed now.” My wife told me that when she turned her head very slowly to see who was having this conversation, it turned out to be a young mother with her baby in her arms, hence the nipple biting.

A friend of mine, while walking through a graveyard in Glasgow in Scotland, found himself behind two elderly ladies in deep conversation. One turned to the other while pointing to the far end of the cemetery and said, in a broad Glaswegian accent, 

“You know old Martha Connelly?” 

“Aye” replied the other old lady.

“Well they buried her Fanny over there!”

No, she hadn't had an operation to have a body part removed, it turned out to be the woman's sister.

Another friend of mine told me that many years ago while at a motor bike race meeting, two young women were queuing at the burger bar in front of where he was standing. One turned to the other and said, “I only did it as a favour for him, when I put it in my mouth it made me feel sick!” My friend said he tried not to listen to the rest of the conversation as he didn't want to hear anything that would make him feel sick, before his precious burger. But it's like having a spot on your nose: people can't help but look at it, and gossip has the same effect  - you can't help but listen to it. She carried on with the story.

“As soon as I started sucking it I knew it was a big mistake, but I was shocked just how fast it came! The taste of it made me fell sick, now I can't get rid of the taste in my mouth!” Both women then fell about laughing.

A little later that day my friend saw the woman who had had this conversation, with an old friend of his. He felt a little awkward, knowing what this woman had said earlier when his friend came over to talk to him with her in tow. They had a brief chat then, this guy turned and introduced his girlfriend to my friend adding, “She's not friends with me at the moment, I got her to siphon some petrol out of a tank earlier on and she swallowed a mouthful of it!”

So you see the most risqué of conversations can be actually nothing more than mundane when you have the full facts!