So I've heard

Do you ever listen in to random people's conversations as you pass by and feel they are much more interesting than any conversation you have had? Perhaps you were sitting by yourself in a coffee shop pretending to read a book but really you were eavesdropping on anyone within earshot? I do. My favourite is to listen to people in the next aisle in a shopping centre. If they are alone in the aisle they can't see anyone and therefore think no one can hear them. Fools. We can hear you. We are the Secret Listeners.

I think I have been a Secret Listener (or SL) for my whole life. I'm not a CSL (Chronic Secret Listener), it's not a problem and I don't do it to everyone. Just every now and then I like to listen in on someone's conversation and I have heard some very fascinating and sometimes scary things.

For example I was on a bus once with a father and son behind me. The son, who's age approximate to be 8, suddenly asked his father: "Dad. Are you going to cut my head off?" I cannot recall the father's response as I was reeling from the questions raised by the son's query and whether or not I should call Child Services as soon as I stepped off the bus. Another favourite of mine was one in the shops where a young male said to his friends "Yeah, being a checkout chick is hell easy. I could do it. It's just the chick part I'd have a problem with." As you can see, from just these two sentences, being a SL gives a great insight into how diverse our society is. A good coffee shop example would be when a group of young girls were discussing the chocolate dusting on top of their hot chocolates and one had the exciting anecdote: "There was this one place I went to, in Perth, where they had music notes and love hearts on top.............It was crazy." Yeah it sounds well crazy, I'm surprised you left it til now to share this astounding story with your friends, in fact I bet it's so crazy that it's the type of place which you can only visit once every few months because the craziness would just be too much, lucky it's in Perth otherwise I don't think we could sleep living so near a place like that. Yes it's very hard as a SL to not respond to a comment or question but the secrecy must be maintained. That's the whole point of being a SL.

Maybe you think being a SL is weird and an invasion of privacy but I don't care. It's entertaining, informs me of the world in which I live in and gives me something to blog about.

SLANAOIP
(Secret Listener and not ashamed of it P)