Lessons from the lost art of eavesdropping
Eavesdropping is an art and I am keeping it alive. I do not listen at doors. I do it in public places, for I am not a mere snoop. Dismissing eavesdropping as being nosy is as insulting as calling the cast of Swan Lake a conga line. And like any form of art, you can have talent, but you are nothing if you do not practice.
I had some very clunky episodes when I was a novice. On the bus home from school, I once tuned in to the conversation of some older girls sitting behind me. Once they realised, they had fun with me. Their chat went from normal gossip to “then these aliens came down and abducted us all”. Rumbled, I bowed my head in shame as the girls got off the bus giggling. I vowed to work hard and come back stronger.
These days of phones and noise-cancelling headphones present different challenges. You have to be very committed to strike gold. I’ve found that older teenagers are always the best value. They don’t do small talk and are happy to loudly discuss personal matters within earshot of fellow passengers who have been on the same page of their book for 27 minutes. On a train recently, I had the good fortune of sitting next to two who had just finished their GCSEs and were on their way to Milo’s party in Bath.
Milo, I discovered, was having the party at his family’s country home, hence the journey from London. The girls were relieved there was to be a pizza van stationed on the grounds all night. At the same age, I would have judged these two girls as clueless poshos who didn’t even care about the Corn Laws of 1815. But 50-year-old me was charmed by them (and has forgotten what the Corn Laws were).
I discreetly watched as they pulled out of their small holdalls enough paraphernalia to set up a dressing room on their seat table, including a mirror with lights and endless pots of creams and powders and sprays – each girl as magically equipped as an Instagram-savvy Mary Poppins. They were beautiful. What 16-year-old isn’t? One of them was a cool blonde and the other was a brunette who was “legit fucked’’ from a party the night before. Her face was covered with inflamed, painful-looking acne which she stared at calmly in the mirror.
The blonde girl was discussing her mother, who had been very curt with her all week: “And I’m like, I’m not going to see you for two weeks, so like, can’t we make the most of our time together, you’re being a bitch.” Her friend – who had in 40 seconds magically turned her skin completely flawless – said, “That’s cos you’re going away with your dad. She’s in pain”.
“Yah,” was the reply from the blonde one as she attached false eyelashes with surgical precision. “They legit hate each other and I’m like, I love my mum, but I can’t carry this for her. It’s her stuff.” The two discussed how it feels to have warring parents with admirable compassion. Terms like “self-support” and “mindful processing” flew between them along with “Oh fuck, my hair’s legit shit. Frizz. Fucking rain. Do you think Milo will have hair straighteners?”
I wanted these girls to have a wonderful night. I didn’t want them to stress about their hair – and let’s face it, even if there were hair straighteners at Milo’s house, it would take an age for the butler to locate them. I pulled my own straighteners out of my bag. “I couldn’t help overhearing, would you like to borrow mine?”
The girls looked at me in surprise, as though the actual train seat had started talking to them. Then, realising I was a person, they screamed with joy, grabbing the straighteners as though they were a lifebuoy on the Titanic. “Oh my god you’re the train angel,” the brunette said as she transformed her rained-on hair into a sleek, smooth mane.
Some people might have moved seats, irritated by the endless spraying. Others might have blocked them out with music or a podcast. But they would have missed getting an insight into a world of emotionally intelligent teens – and the opportunity to be an accidental celestial being.
This article is from New Humanist’s autumn 2024 issue. Subscribe now.
