I miss Pamie. Hope the shows are going great! Meanwhile, I couldn't bear to look at the forum with no new questions any longer, so I thought I'd throw something out there:

Have you ever accidentally overheard something that you just couldn't bring yourself to walk away from because it was just too juicy? Of course, I have a long winded example of such as it happened to me:

My room mates were supposedly gone for the night with friends to a comedy club downtown. I came home from my nite job to change clothes and hit the town myself, and a male friend of mine was picking me up. I assumed no one was home, saw no one, it was dark, etc. The blond roomie's door was closed. My room was directly across from hers, and as I primped I started hearing moans come from her room. I paused, trying to figure out what I was really hearing, when the moans turn into the roomie's voice saying, "Oh God. Oh GOD. Oh Yes. Yes! YES!!!!" Well, who can walk away from that? I just stood there, brush in hand, listening and trying to figure out if there was someone in there with her or if she was flying solo. I heard a quiet knock at the front door, tiptoed downstairs to let my friend in, who followed me up, so I said shhhhh, because I didn't want to interrupt whatever was happening behind the bedroom door. Much more moaning and wailing went on, causing us to laugh so hard that we were practically laying in the fetal position on the floor with our hands clapped over our mouths to keep from howling, ready to pee in our pants. We were very mature. Then I heard a male voice mumble something as it approached the door. We jumped out of eyeshot, afraid to be caught eavesdropping, and heard roomie say, "Hey, you're not leaving are you?" more male mumbling, door opened, closed, footsteps, front door closing, then silence. We looked at each other, eyebrows raised, suddenly realizing that we had just been witness to something that roomie probably would prefer there were no witnesses to. We quietly left.

The next morning I found roomie tearing her room apart, sheets off the bed, stuff tossed everywhere. Not sure if I should mention the night before, I just said hi, and she started to tell me about the nite. She had gotten sick (read: drunk) at the comedy club, and one of the guys in their group kindly offered to bring her home. Evidently one thing led to another (which I fessed up to knowing, couldn't stand it any longer), yada yada yada, and she couldn't find her undies. That's why she had torn up the bed, she thought maybe they were tangled up in the sheets. I helped her look, but we found no undies. It was good for a laugh, which she was a great sport about because the thought of this guy pulling her panties out of his jacket pocket to show his friends was too hilarious to keep to myself. He was around 25 or so, but still took trophies home? What a goob!

Anyway, it was quite amusing. Ever been a witness to a scandal? Ever had the goods on someone but had to keep quiet about it because you didn't want to look like a snoop?

Come back soon Pamie!

-- Anonymous, September 29, 1999

Answers

I'm one of those freaky people who listens to everything. I can be sitting at a table with 5 friends who are having an interesting conversation and all I'll be able to think about is what the people 1 booth over are talking about--rivited to the conversation at the table next to me. It doesn't matter if it's three old women talking about the pros and cons of Big K, some weirdos arguing if light sabers are better than tazers, or some sex couple talking about their wild escapades. I love to hear other people's conversations.

-- Anonymous, September 29, 1999

once i was on a cordless phone in my house and i could hear someone else's conversation. it was a drug deal.

-- Anonymous, September 29, 1999

Oh my god, Klisma, I am the *same* way.

The funniest thing is, my husband KNOWS when I'm eavesdropping. He'll delibertely start talking about WHATEVER, just so I can't hear the people behind me going on and on about their plans to take over the FOX Network. I always shoot him that look that says: "Shut UP! Can't you see I'm trying to LISTEN to SOMETHING here!?!"

And he, of course, shoots back the look, "You aren't SUPPOSED to be listening to their conversation!" and continues talking: "So then, the computer just QUIT working. I tried rebooting and that didn't work... et cetera, et cetera..."

-- Anonymous, September 29, 1999

I once saw some email that wasn't intended for me. My best friend and erstwhile love interest is someone I know online, and he told me once he was working on a poem about the whole online relationship thing. Since he's an amazing poet, I was looking forward to reading it. I kept asking to see it, and he kept saying it wasn't done.

Finally, looking around in places where I shouldn't have, I found the poem, which he had sent to another girl I knew he was interested in. Rather than being a generic poem about having friends far away, it had turned into something incredibly romantic. He had been lying to me about finishing it because he knew I'd be hurt that he'd written it to this other girl.

I was hurt, but I couldn't say anything, cause I never should have 'eavesdropped' to see it to begin with.

This is me, always the best friend. :P :)

-- Anonymous, September 29, 1999

This wasn't intentional, but the woman who sat in the cube next me used to have these extremely personal phone conversations at a normal-to-loud volume, so I became privy to her private life. It was pretty frustrating; I'd be trying to program, and suddenly, I'm hearing about her no-good ex-husband and their custody battles, or her scheduling appointments with her psychiatrist, or her having New-Agey "Let's Remember The Good And Breathe In The Joy Of Life, Rather Than Be Pulled Into The Swamp Of Negativity" teary conversations with her friends. This was marginally annoying. You know, there's just no professional protocol for saying, "shut the hell up about your private life, and by the way, whatever you nuked for lunch smells like ass."

But I just moved downstairs, so life is good again.

That was a pretty lame story. Sorry. :(

-- Anonymous, September 29, 1999

The walls were *really* thin in our old apartment, and we could hear our annoying downstairs neightbor yakking day and night on the phone. Her usual conversations were really bitchy yet boring...along the lines of:

"And then *I* said, 'I don't think so, MISTER... and then *he* said, 'Well, the project was DUE on Tuesday!' And then *I* said, 'Well, if accounting didn't have their head up their ASS!!"...pause..."Oh, I KNOW. That is SO true."

It actually got really annoying, because her voice seemed to go up through a vent that was directly behind me whenever I was trying to work at the computer, so I would have to listen to this blather all day long (I work at home.)

But... one day she's going on as usual...blah blah blah...and then:

"So you know what happened in MY apartment building this weekend?" (pause)(my ears perk up) "My downstairs neighbor got busted for DRUG DEALING!"

(my ears perk WAY up. We were the upstairs neighbors, by the way.)

"Yeah, the cops came and took him away. It was a big SCENE and everything. Yeah, I KNOW."

Afterwards we noticed that the guy below her, previously known to us as "that nice- looking guy with the garden in the courtyard," had, in fact, totally disappeared.

-- Anonymous, September 29, 1999

Once at a hotel bar I overheard two guys talking about wife-swapping. They were watching their wives on the dancefloor and one said that he'd let his wife take another man to their house, then show up and scare the hell out of the guy. The other guy said he did the same thing, but that he and his wife had a very open marriage. Then they started saying how each other's wives were very attractive, etc... I just sat there wide-eyed, desperately trying through telepathy to get some other normal person in the bar to overhear the same conversation and look at me and give the "Yeah, they're really talking about wife swappin'" nod.

-- Anonymous, September 30, 1999

*giggles at Carolyn* Oh my god! I have a co-worker like that too. Six of us are in one area with very low cubicle walls. One of my co-workers has a /horrible/ habit of making *ahem* very 'personal' calls to guys she meets on the internet and speaking loud enough that all of us can hear her.

It's rather disturbing to hear a person you already don't like saying things like "Oh? Well what /would/ you do?" in a coy little voice. Management doesn't seem to care, but lemme tell you, it's creepy.

-- Anonymous, September 30, 1999