By Brae Canlen / June 12, 2025
That awful pasta salad your sister-in-law brings to the 4th of July barbecue? Expect it to appear again this year. Your supervisor, the one who was promoted over you because he sucks up to the right people? He is a bona fide psycho who should be reported to HR, for all the good that will do.
These are all true events. But they didn’t happen to me. They happened to people I have never met and probably never will meet. I know about them because I happened to be in the right place at the right time – sitting on my living room couch reading a book or working on my computer.
The victims were walking their dogs past my house or maybe just getting some exercise. They decided to call someone. Or someone decided to call them. Either way, they pressed a button and pulled me into their conversations, their dramas, their lives.
A noisy street gives you privacy to talk freely on your cell phone. A quiet street, like mine, takes it away. Conversing in public is an unwitting invite for anyone within hearing range to pass judgment on you. If you think people are too busy or too disinterested to pay attention to your personal minutiae, I ask you to consider two words: Kim Kardashian.
The Japanese, always a step ahead of us, cover their books in brown paper when they ride the subway so nobody knows what they’re reading. In this country, we broadcast our colonoscopy results. Americans are overloaded with information they don’t want. Which makes it hard to get the information we do want. We like to share. But at what point does sharing become involuntary listening?
When I’m standing in front of the TV trying to get the remote to work, a heated argument that rolls past my window doesn’t help. And I only get to hear one side of the conversation, leaving me to fill in the rest. Does that count as eavesdropping? I know I could ignore them – I want to ignore them – but that’s like trying not to watch a couple fighting in a supermarket line.
I’m not the kind of person who asks people to turn off their phone, even in a doctor’s waiting room. (If that was you in my internist’s office, please stop reading, put your cell phone in the oven, and set the temperature to “broil.” Ten minutes should do it.)
But I did once put my hands over my ears when a guy sitting next to me on an airplane waiting for takeoff used his cell phone to break up with his girlfriend. I could not hear what she was saying. But I was happy for her.
Brae Canlen is a retired journalist who lives in North Park.
Unlike your street, the one on which I live is noisy (pedestrians and heavy traffic), yet I still hear everything from business deals to lovers’ spats. However, nothing is worse than public transit, where you’re a captive audience on a bus or trolley for long periods of time, while people scream into their cell phones. I really feel for the social workers and probation officers on the receiving end. Compulsive talkers are the bane of my existence! If they’re hard of hearing, it’s even worse! The transit company posts notices in English and Spanish about rider etiquette, but they’re ignored. Don’t expect things to get any better, either, if you know what I mean! Where’s Emily Post when you need her?
More from this brilliant writer Ms Rag!