Eavesdropping

"There's nothing like eavesdropping to show you that the world outside your head is different from the world inside your head."
--Thornton Wilder

With the understanding that, at least as far as my head is concerned, Mr. Wilder's statement will prove nearly categorically true, I know that I undertake eavesdropping at my own peril. It is one of a cornucopia of activities in which I can participate that reminds me that my teeming brain is incontroveribly different from those of the other members of my species, with whom I experience and respond to life.

While it may be (rightly) pointed out that all individuals and their thoughts are distinct from those of the 6 billion other persons inhabiting the earth [hence the very use of the term "individual" to refer to a person], I sometimes feel that my thoughts are different not only by degree, but in substance. Sometimes I may be oblivious to something which seems quite obvious to others; more often, I feel singularly slighted or receive excessive joy from, what in the eyes of witnesses, may appear to be a very unremarkable occurance--but again, these are differences only of degree. The real quirks of my mind have produced the best blogs, for example, my response to an unappeasable dog, my response to an intractable student, or my response to an outlandish Christmas relative.

Nevertheless, on rare occasion I will eavesdrop and encounter a mind that is different from my own, but makes me feel as though that other mind is the one which is "other", and I belong to the "in" group, the majority of normal people. Yesterday was one of those occasions.

On Fridays I can take Harbor Boulevard all the way from Hacienda Heights (work) to Anaheim (fellowship). the route is tenable because: a) I need drive down only one major street; b) traffic on the freeways at that time is horrible; and c) the Pruis gets great milage on surface streets. I often stop at the Baja Fresh on Harbor and Orangethorpe for dinner (usually a chipotle-glazed, charbroiled chicken salad). In the parking lot yesterday, I heard what appeared to be a mother with her two grammar school-aged children walking back to their cars as I was exiting mine.

"I have the grossest thing to tell you--make that two gross things!" As they moved out of earshot, I imagined her moving into her next sentence: "Listen carefully as I unravel my tales of mystery, intrigue, and aberancy!"

Ok, I thought to myself, she could be one of these new hip, 'cool moms.' She can relate. She can identify with America's youth culture. She can tell her kids about weird, gross things. In turn, they can trust her. They can come to her and expect her to understand their issues with drugs, peer pressure, and premarital sex. This is good, I told myself. More openness, more bonding, more love.

Then, as I turned the thought over in my mind, I wondered, would I want my mom to tell me gross things? What if it's not "gross" as in "I saw a dead opossum in the road--gross!" but "gross" as in "I want to describe explicitly the details surrounding your respective conceptions--gross!" There were, in fact, two children, and she said that she had wanted to describe two gross events. I'm not saying that conception or sex in general is gross, but one certainly need not be exposed to the particulars of his own genesis. [Reader, if you doubt me on this point, take a moment to visualize your own parents in their marital bed...And now we agree.] Those are, from the children's perspectives, certainly gross things, the details of which the mother might spare her children, for fear of the psychic trauma she might otherwise initiate.

Of course, from here it was not a gross leap to imagining all number of perverse, inappropriate stories that mother might be unleashing upon her hapless offspring. "Child services! Call child services! Find those kids a foster home, pronto!" my superego screamed.

***** ***** ***** ***** *****

This round of pharisaical judging was not unlike that spawned by a conversation I overheard one day while dining with Alvin at Mimi's. In my defense, the woman in the next booth over was unnaturally loud--especially given the nature of her conversation. I was thus not so much an active eavesdropper as an unwilling victim forced to hear her recount her bawdy tableau. Her lunch companion, far more discrete, allowing us to hear only half the conversation--which was more than enough for me.

"...And he wanted me to come up to his hotel room. So I did, and we were on the bed, and he wanted to [sleep with] me. Well, our clothes were already off, but I'm a married woman, so I couldn't do that with him. But you know, I have a good heart...Really! I mean it, I have a good heart, so I wanted to let him down easy, not to make him feel unattractive or unwanted. 'Listen,' I said to him, 'listen, it's not that I'm not attracted to you, but we just can't do this. It's just not right.' Sure he was disappointed, but in my heart--in my good heart--I know I made the right decision. So I put my clothes back on, and me and my good heart left."

There I was in a state of utter ambivalence: half of me felt sort of debased just by exposure to her story, but half of me was intrigued. Who was this woman? Why, when she had pretty clearly engaged in an extramarital affair, did she keep insisting that her heart was good? What was her lunch partner thinking about all of this?

Imagine my astonishment when they exited their booth, and I found the woman looked well into her sixties! Either she actually was that old, and defied my stereotype of who a typical adultress is, or she was much younger and had simply aged very poorly [unprotected sun exposure over long periods of time will do that to you], thus defying my stereotype of what men find phyically attractive in a woman. Forced by the incongruity of the whole situation to choose, I resolved upon the latter, and decided that it was her "good heart," and not her looks, that had proven so alluring to the sexually frustrated man.