1. On cutting nipples.

I was sitting in the grass at a track meet and overheard two guys talking.

Guy 1, “So I took the scissors to my nipple and started cutting a little bit, but it didn’t hurt, so I cut the rest off.”
Guy 2, “Dude… What?”

2. Something about cough syrup and an ambulance.

Distinctly overheard someone say, “I haven’t seen you since we got drunk off cough syrup in your ambulance.” Made a point to write it down because sentences like that don’t happen every day.

3. Someone getting run over by a carriage.

I was walking to class when I passed a girl on a bench with a cellphone to her ear: “What do you mean ‘she got run over by a carriage’?” Sounded pretty straightforward to me.

4. Guys not knowing what Google is.

It was a table full of old men at a pizza joint. As I walked by I looked over at them and just caught the end of his statement… one of them leaned in real close and says “…and then she told me to ‘Google it!’…” there was a pause and then he just goes “WHAT THE FUCK IS A GOOGLE?!!” and the other old guys just kind of threw up their hands.

5. What happens when a makeup artist reads her clients texts.

I am a makeup artist and my clients sit in the chair for an hour sometimes. Conversations don’t always last and this one girl was texting. I was standing behind her doing her hair and she had an international phones so it looked cool and different than mine, or any one I had seen. I was peeking at the screen to see what it was all about and she happened to be texting her boyfriend and how she wanted to fuck herself with my curling iron. I never peeked again and I never looked at my curling iron as just an iron again either.

6. Girl got herpes.

I was on a busy peak-hour train, in the “Quiet Carriage” – in this carriage, people are expected to keep their music down low and their phone conversations hushed. This young girl in front of me gets a call. She then starts going on and on about how her boyfriend gave her herpes, complete with some lovely descriptions and theories about him cheating. Considering that it was so quiet, she had the rapt attention of 50+ horrified passengers.

7. An argument over who shit the bed.

I lived next to a 50-something married couple that used to get into drunken shouting matches on a biweekly basis. One day they were on the balcony screaming at each other about which one of them shit the bed. They proceeded to explain their diets and colon shapes to defend their innocence.

8. Girl’s got syphilis.

In a Library at University doing work, over heard at the next table, “So I told Ben I have syphilis last night.” Everyone at the tables next to that table all looked up at once with the look of “did I just hear that”, followed by attempts to contain laughter.

Quiet Libraries are not the best place to share some things.

9. What happens when you eavesdrop on your boss.

Heard my boss talk about a guy who had been using his company credit card to start his own escort service. Was flying girls in from Las Vegas and everything.

Of course this was all top secret and nobody was supposed to know but a glass door can only keep so much sound in.

10. Something about eyelids.

“It was sucking on my eyelids for like 10 minutes.”

I must have misheard.

11. Nurse eavesdropping.

I overheard 2 nurses talking about a patient who was admitted to the hospital for intoxication. Along with having a bac of 3 times the limit, upon examination the doctor found she had a pill bottle in her vagina. When he asked the family member about it the response was that she always kept the bottle there to make sure no one stole it. There was some benzo in the bottle (xanax or something of the sort).

I would have paid to see the doctor’s face when discovering the bottle.

12. Overheard after a Mother left her family.

Walking past my dad’s bedroom not long after my mom left (maybe a week or two), I overheard him on the phone telling someone that my mom had been having an affair and had left him for that guy. They had told me differently of course… But to ten-year-old me it broke my heart and made me wonder why we weren’t good enough for my mom to want to stay. I told my dad about 15 years later and he said, “I’m so so sorry. You weren’t supposed to know that. I thought you were downstairs still.”

13. Overheard in a college dorm.

College freshman living in the dorms, upper bunk. Night time, haven’t quite fallen asleep. Overhear one of roommate’s ladies saying “you want to put WHAT in my butt?? Don’t you know how big your dick is?”

14. Dude overhears a girl talking about his friend.

I was at a party and overheard a girl talking about some guy she randomly fucked.
She was regaling her friend, almost sobbing, “I almost threw up the next day when I saw him and realized he was a MEXICAN! And THEN I realized I forgot to take my pill, so ALL WEEK I was afraid I was going to have a MEXI-BABY. THANK GOD I got my period.” I ended up overhearing this girl’s name later on and committed it to memory.

Fast forward about a week, I’m drinking with my buddy Miguel at his place. He makes some remark about getting laid recently and how he “hated himself because he didn’t use a condom” and how he was really fucking drunk and this fugly girl basically took advantage of him. I just blurt out, mid-sentence “WAS HER NAME MELISSA?!?”

Yep.

15. A guy saying weird stuff to his mom.

Passed some guy on his phone who said, “Oh my god mom I have never went down on a guy so fast in my life.”

16. Husband overhears wife’s affair

I once overheard my ex wife telling a friend “He says I come like a pornstar.” Sadly, the “he” in question was not me.

Later, after the affair came out and we were I the process of divorcing but still living in the same apartment (big mistake, but neither of us could afford to break the lease), I picked up the phone not realizing she was on it to hear “Those were your fluids, you should pay the dry cleaning.”

17. Something about oatmeal.

“And then he was like oooh gurl, yo titties feel like oatmeal.”

18. Eavesdropping on a racist.

“I can’t believe a black person had the nerve to shush me!”

19. Overheard: TMI.

I was at the food court in a mall when this group of teenagers walked by, 3 guys and 1 girl. The girl punches the one guy in the arm and says “my asshole hurts!” the guy she hit had the biggest grin on his face.

20. Overheard boss’s weekend liaisons.

Overheard my boss telling someone in his office about the crazy weekend he’d had. He went home with a “bangin’ cougar” in her 60s (he’s 27) did the deed, and came face to face with her husband as he was leaving the house. The woman came out, started making out with her husband, and then they convinced him to have a threesome with him that “made him feel like he was fucking his parents”. Couldn’t look at him the same way after that.

21. Overheard: dude doesn’t think he’s the baby daddy.

“It’s not my kid. It doesn’t even look like me. The pussy’s mine but the kid ain’t.”

22. Dude overhears the most captivating story.

Couple is walking down the street toward me, clearly in the early stages of dating (maybe 3rd date). Guy is animatedly telling the girl a story, and I overhear: “…got really wasted and I blacked out, and the next thing I know, I wake up in Hoboken without my shoes, and I just thought, ‘Where are my kids?'”

One of the few times I’ve considered turning around and following someone down the street. Was dying to hear the rest of the story.

23. Overheard traumatic conversation between parents.

I overheard my parents talking while my father was dealing with cancer. I’m paraphrasing, so forgive me.

“The will’s all set?”
“Stop asking, I told you it is.”
“You’re gonna be okay.”
“I’m gonna be in a box. I just wanna see him grow up a bit more, y’know?”

24. Overheard in India.

In Dharamsala, India, from a middle aged white woman: “And then to obtain a higher Karma he penetrated our shakra’s with his penis. But not in a sexual way.”

And she clarified that the shakra’s were situated in the vagina.

25. Overheard Grandma’s visions.

My Grandma to my dad while my siblings and I were in her living room in sleeping bags about to hit the hay: “Yeah, but I still see Pap (my grandpa) sitting in the kitchen all the time”. Yeah, dude’s been dead for like 2 years. Kitchen is in plain view from the living room I was sleeping in. I did not sleep that night.

26. Dude overhears someone shit-talking him.

In university I ran for student council and needed signatures to get on the ballot. I asked a girl in one of my classes (with whom I’d worked on some projects, and who had always been friendly) to sign, and she did. After class, walking to another building, the girl is just a few feet ahead of me and I hear her plainly saying to a friend, “…and then that asshole wanted me to sign up for him to get on council.”

I didn’t say a word, but just walked a little faster and passed them.

27. Overheard in a hospital.

I was in a hospital room with a fishing lure embedded in my face while next door a man was describing mild chest pains to a nurse. He sounded pretty calm, “Yeah, it’s not heartburn because I didn’t have any BLAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRG-” I could HEAR how far the vomit launched.

Also, the doctors were calling me “That fish hook kid” when they thought I wasn’t listening.

28. Dude overhears upsetting story about a husband and his dog.

I was on a train in Toronto around 6:30 pm last summer (so extremely busy, every seat taken kind of situation) and these two middle-aged women were casually chatting about their husbands, children, what have you. The one woman is talking about her new German shepherd and how her husband has really taken a liking to him. So much so that he’s spending time with the dog in the middle of the night while she’s sleeping. THEN she says to her friend – I shit you not – that she found her husband jerking off the dog at 3am, allegedly to “calm it down”. She didn’t even lower her voice! I looked at her friend and she was pretty flabbergasted, too.

I never saw her on the train again, but I hope that her husband has stopped fiddling with their dog. Yuck.

29. Boy overhears upsetting conversation between his parents.

When I was in 4th grade I overheard my parents talking about one of my classmates with cerebral palsy. I heard them say that her disability was visible, whereas mine was not. That was the first time I had heard my own parents refer to me as “disabled.” It hurt, and I “ran away” to the corner of the street and just sat there in sadness until my dad came to find me for dinner.

30. Overheard: neighbors, shtumping.

(Heard late one night while walking up the stairs and past my neighbors’ apartment door):

Her: (loudly) “Hold still, I can’t get it in all the way.”
Him: “it’s not supposed to go in all the way – OW that hurt.”
Her: “oooh sorry. Baby, this was your idea, should we stop? I don’t wanna do it if you don’t.”
Him: “no it’s cool, it’s cool – this is good, but it wont fit unless u open it up a little more…”
(Thinking to myself: “oookay. They’re assembling new furniture… at midnight. I think I’ll just continue up to my apartment now…)

Every once in a while I pass him in the hall and I’m like: “Hey what’s up man.”

31. Child overhears Dad’s affair.

When I was younger I heard my dad on the phone with another woman saying he loved her. The other woman wasn’t my mom, so I told her.

My parents ended up getting a divorce and my dad hated me for a while until he stopped drinking.

32. Overhearing young girls talk about sex.

I don’t know if you’d call it messed up, but for me it was incredibly eye-opening listening in on a conversation in HS between girls I knew, and what they wanted/liked about sex.

I had no idea at the time that “normal” girls were just as obsessed about sex as the average teen-age guy was.

33. Son overhears mom talking about him.

“He spends all his day in his cave playing video games and it’s pathetic.” – My mother

34. Overheard: disturbing conversation between 12-year-olds.

I was at a wedding this weekend and this 12 year old next to me was talking to some other 12 year old and I just hear one of them say, “He’s cute and all- But he’s just not hot enough to fuck.”

??????? WHAT PLANET AM I ON?

35. Overheard: Waffle House, 4am

Sitting in Waffle House at 4am. Cowboy hat dude said to $3 hooker lady “close your legs, you’re leaking.”

36. Something about a brother being overly sexual to his sister.

At Starbucks studying when I overhear two wealthy mom’s talking about their kids. The mom says, “I really want to get him to stop doing that to his sister I mean she’s only 10. As my brain was trying to understand what I might be hearing, they went into great detail about how she has tried to get him to stop doing sexual stuff with his sister. There was a lot of talking about doctors and therapists so I assumed they were taking care of it but damn. They were not quiet about it and this was a fairly slow store.

37. Overheard: interesting sex technique.

I was in a store once and overheard two girls talking about how one thinks she may be pregnant. So her friend says, “Well did you use any KY Jelly this time?” “No.” “What did you use then?” “Smuckers,” she said.

38. Overheard in the office.

A lady I don’t like complaining to her friend about how strong the coffee is at our work. “I put a sign right by the coffee maker: ‘only use 2 scoops.’ Whoever makes it isn’t reading my sign.” Then she whispers, “I get bad diarrhea when it’s too strong.”

I used roughly 7 scoops the next day.

39. Overheard at the OBGYN.

My wife was at her ob’s office when a ditzy pregnant teen asked her friend: “omg! Do you think the baby will fart inside of me? Will I feel it? Ugh, that’s so gross, I don’t want baby farts inside of me.”

40. Overheard: ominous conversation between parents.

My parents thought I was asleep.
Dad: “Should we tell her?”
Mom: “No. She can never know.”

I never asked.