Keep it private
17 November 2009
I continue to be shocked by conversations I hear in public. I’m usually not shocked that they’re happening, just that they are happening in public.
Like yesterday, when I was eating lunch at Panera with McKenna. There was a group of college aged girls sitting at the table next to ours. One was sharing with her friends that her cousin and his wife just learned they can’t have children, so she’s thinking about offering to be a surrogate mother for them once she’s done with school. She said she’d use the money to have a boob job and tummy tuck afterward.
I’m hoping none of these were terribly close friends, because they were all hedging around the difficult questions, and instead asking stuff like, “Well … when do you think you’ll suggest this to them? Because you might want to wait until you’re absolutely sure…” Hopefully the friends were waiting to ask the hard stuff until they were in a more conducive place for conversation. Panera at noon when at least six other tables are in hearing range doesn’t seem ideal to me. Especially when there might be nosey writers nearby.
And a few weeks ago, I was in line at the post office where I (and everyone else in line) was privvy to a conversation between a woman in her late twenties and the postal worker. She was asking how to take action against someone who she thinks stole her child support check, because she thought the people she’d been living with had taken it. And she needed a change-of-address form because they’d kicked her out. Although she didn’t have a new place yet, so she wasn’t sure where to change her address to. And then she fielded a very loud phone cell phone call in which she was asking if she could crash for a couple of nights.
I suppose it’s just different personality types. Maybe these ladies really didn’t care if everyone around them knew that they were considering a major decision like being a surrogate, or had fallen into an awkward situaton with child support. It’s not like either of them kept their volume down.
It’s piqued my interest about writing an open book kind of character, one who truly doesn’t care what people hear about her (him) or what they think.
But – tip for the day – if you want the conversation kept private, have it in a private place.
Comments
I’m amazed at some of what goes out on the internet as well. I’ve already been surprised by someone who has come up to me and said “I read your blog.” People I never would’ve thought even knew what a blog was. And when it is out there on the internet, it’s available not just to the people in the restaurant or in the line at the PO. It’s there for the entire planet to see!
Posted by Erica Vetsch on 17 November 2009
It’s crazy but it just shows you the type of world we live in now. Nothing is sacred or too much information anymore.
Posted by Michelle on 17 November 2009
Yeah, it’s crazy what you hear in public, isn’t it? I’m just a private person, I guess, but these things you listed made me cringe.
Yikes.
Posted by Lynn Rush on 17 November 2009