Have you ever seen The Wire? I haven’t, and no one’s ever asked me if I have. But I’ve been thinking about it all day.
It’s a little warmer now, technically spring, and people have started sitting outside the coffee shop in our neighborhood. When we have time, Boaz and I walk there, order two drinks, and then we sit and pretend to look at our phones while I listen to people talk. Boaz might actually look at his phone, now that I think about it.
I miss eavesdropping more than I can put into words. Not as much as I miss seeing my mom, but it’s a very close second. Yesterday there were five people together at the table next to us. They were talking about their favorite 90s tv dramas, The Wire specifically, and it was the best thing I’ve heard all week.
I love the adventure of eavesdropping.
I could clear my throat at any moment and tell all five of these people that I’ve heard of The Wire. Then what would happen? I don’t know. Probably nothing. But it’s exciting to think about, isn’t it.
I love the unscriptedness of eavesdropping.
This 90s tv drama conversation was definitely not edited for my, or anyone’s entertainment. One guy was doing most of the talking. He positioned himself as a massive fan of the Wire but I’m not convinced he’d ever seen it. If he had, he definitely hadn’t seen more than one episode. He called it “The Breaking Bad of the 90s” three times, which seems like something he heard someone else say, he didn’t provide any other details about what the show is, except that he loves it and his friends should watch it if they like good tv. I looked up The Wire when we got home, and it ran from 2002-2008.
I love that eavesdropping requires a meditation-level of focus.
If you miss a detail in the conversation about “The Breaking Bad of the 90s” you can’t rewind. You can’t look online to see if that one girl just called the person next to her “babe.” Did I imagine that? Are they dating?
I love that eavesdropping makes any place I am feel special.
In my mind, the guy who has maybe seen one episode of The Wire is now a celebrity. I know more about him and would be better equipped to pick him out in a crowd than I would Dominic West or Lance Reddick, two stars of The Wire who I just looked up on IMDb. What are the odds I got to sit next to a local celebrity, someone more famous than Dominic West or Lance Reddick?
Most of all I love that, for all the excitement and focus, the stakes are so low compared to other conversations.
Even when talking to my best friends, or people who I’ll never see again, I still have moments days later where a tiny voice crawls onto my shoulder and says “why did you say that Brooke you’re an idiot.” I know it doesn’t make me an idiot, but I still don’t like that voice. And that voice doesn’t happen when I eavesdrop. In fact, when I eavesdrop I get to think that other people are idiots. A few weeks ago at the outdoor coffee shop, I heard a woman tell her friend that in the city she had just moved here from, there was a communal box where anyone could drop off meat and the city would turn it into amazing compost. The idea of amazing meat-based gardening compost flew out of her mouth into the world and just made itself comfortable, as if it was the most normal thing anyone had ever said.
Not much personal news over here, the Spider Force is on temporary hiatus.
I just finished reading You’ll Never Believe What Happened To Lacey by Amber Ruffin and her sister, and I’m obsessed with it.
I also have a lot of friends with books out or almost-out, and all of them are amazing and I’m so excited they exist: Directions by Hallie Bateman, My Inner Sky by Mari Andrew, Living with Mochi by Gemma Gené and Vulnerability Is My Superpower by Jackie Davis.
Along with things to read and places to support, I also saw this online AAPI Harassment Bystander Intervention training with openings the next few weeks.
I hope you’re safe and well and I hope I can eavesdrop on one of your conversations someday very soon.
The Wire is such an amazing show. Not sure you’d be crazy about all the violence and drug use but it really may be the best show of all time. However, I have a strong bias towards the Simpsons because that’s who I grew up with.
Unrelated to this post, I love reading this blog. So much of it is relatable and the part that isn’t is so intriguing and entertaining at the same time.
I loooove eavesdropping. At public transport (Before the pandemic), at work, even at my apartment building. The guy in the 203 cheated on his girlfriend :O