I love to people watch.  Sometimes I’ll plunk myself down with a coffee and a good view and just observe the comings and goings on a particular day in a particular spot.  Often I’m watching from afar, my own silent movie, guessing about that fight across the street or the rush of that family whizzing by outside.

Sometimes I hear entire conversations I’m not trying to hear.  On those days I’m simply trying to get some work done or read a few chapters yet I find myself next to a table of talkers.  If I can tune it out I usually do, but in a tightly packed coffee shop sometimes we are stuck with each other and the stories floating past their proper tables.

Then there is the public bathroom stall, wherein some folks feel the need to keep talking no matter what.  Bodily noises, doors slamming, flushes galore, and yet these folks keep up their end of the conversation which is, of course, loud enough for the rest of us to hear.  Most of the time I can’t listen to those conversations because I’m too busy plotting my move to yell loudly, “You know she’s on the toilet, right?”  (No, I haven’t done that yet.)

Our pool opened up a few weeks ago and I’m swimming my laps outside.  I try to go early enough to avoid the throngs of kids but there are usually a few parents in the shallow end with toddlers.  They are often there together at the same time each day, parents chatting while kids intermittently shout, “Look at me!”

I don’t try to listen to these conversations but water is a great sound carrier and some parents are used to having adult talk while kids play nearby.  I usually dry off and catch my breath and log my miles in my phone.  Just a few minutes in the fresh air sitting near the pool.  And then phrases come my way, bouncing across the water’s surface…”Then I switched to Prozac”…  Just enough so I’ll look up, wondering who said that and how the rest of the story unfolds.

Even in coffee shops and bathroom stalls a lot of people are talking to other people in other places.  I’ve gotten so used to the louder-than-normal cell phone speech that when a quiet little person-to-person sentence blows across the water to my ears it seems strange now.  Strange that folks are actually talking to one another in person, sometimes about things they might want to keep more private.  But still.

Today I said a little prayer for the talker who’s been trying out medications.  And I thought how old-fashioned it is to overhear two sides of a conversation.  I thanked God for the 90 degree heat, forcing us to quit our houses and our phones and jump into the pool together for a while.

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photo credit:  (c) 2009 “090807Pool-3” by Maggie, CC BY-SA 2.0