Eavesdropping by Betsy

To eavesdrop means to deliberately listen in on words not meant for you to hear and to do it secretly. I cannot recall a time when this actually happened to me or a time when it was carried out by me. Plenty of times I have overheard things accidentally, things not necessarily meant for my ears, but things making no difference whether I heard them or not.

Plenty of times I’m sure people have accidentally overheard something I said, but words that did not affect them. Or likewise, I have overheard others’ conversations. For example, I recently heard a discussion coming from the next room. The follow-up was that I chose not to join that conversation. It was not interesting to me, or I simply was too tired to join in, or perhaps I was more interested in what I was doing at the time.

So I don’t have much to say about eavesdropping really. Eavesdropping follow-up is a different matter. To my way of thinking “eavesdropping follow-up” means gossip—pure and simple. What fascinates me about gossip is what drives people to do it.

It seems to me that people like to tell secretive things about other people’s private lives because it makes them feel superior to the people to whom they are gossiping. “I know something about so and so that no one else knows. That makes me better informed and smarter and more powerful than all y’all.” In my opinion that is what drives people to gossip.

This all may be sour grapes on my part because I am always and have always been “out of the loop” so to speak—the last one to know the latest gossip. Why is that, I ask? I guess it’s just because I’m not listening, not interested, or maybe I just have bad hearing. Anyway I seem to be hearing impaired when it comes to gossip. Often it’s about people I don’t even know, so who cares? If the gossip is about someone I know and care about, I usually already have the information.
As for eavesdropping, I honestly can’t imagine where I would be if I were secretly listening in on a conversation I was not supposed to hear. I would be too afraid I would get caught. I don’t think I’m very good at spying really. If I had a reason for getting information I ostensibly wasn’t supposed to have, I would ask for it and ask why I wan’t supposed to have it. But I know that would not ever happen because I would not be aware the information even existed.

I like to think that I can mind my own business and just “keep my nose clean” as they say.

© 17 July 16

About the Author

Betsy has been active in the GLBT community including PFLAG, the Denver Women’s Chorus, OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change), and the GLBT Community Center. She has been retired from the human services field for 20 years. Since her retirement, her major activities have included tennis, camping, traveling, teaching skiing as a volunteer instructor with the National Sports Center for the Disabled, reading, writing, and learning. Betsy came out as a lesbian after 25 years of marriage. She has a close relationship with her three children and four grandchildren. Betsy says her greatest and most meaningful enjoyment comes from sharing her life with her partner of 30 years, Gillian Edwards.