Word: eavesdrop
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...daughter's insistence, counting the dogs in 18th and 19th century hunt scenes instead. "It wasn't what I had planned, but it was wonderful," she says. And one weathered traveler has been pleasantly surprised when her two teenagers have brought friends along on vacation: "If I eavesdrop, I can find out what's really going on in my kids' lives. Plus, they treat me a lot better when there's a witness around...
This, anyway, was the story I had heard from the time I was curious enough to eavesdrop on adult conversations. I was three years old when a white bus driver warned Rosa Parks, "Well, I'm going to have you arrested," and she replied, "You may go on and do so." As a child, I didn't understand how doing nothing had caused so much activity, but I recognized the template: David slaying the giant Goliath, or the boy who saved his village by sticking his finger in the dike. And perhaps it is precisely the lure of fairy-tale...
...heads was about the atom bomb. Our duck-and-cover drills were designed to protect us, somehow, from the Big One. Nowadays, we drill our kids on what to do if a classmate goes nuclear. It's an unlikely scenario, just as the Bomb was. But when you eavesdrop on kids these days, there's the painful possibility you'll hear them speculating on who in their class might be most likely to play Doom for real. The shootings at Columbine, Conyers and elsewhere remind us that the threats we face amid our end-of-the-century prosperity may often...
...Oughta Know, to have found the sex nestled in the lyric. But it's more than just movies and television and news. Adolescent curiosity about sex is fed by a pandemic openness about it--in the schoolyard, on the bus, at home when no adult is watching. Just eavesdrop at the mall one afternoon, and you'll hear enough pubescent sexcapades to pen the next few episodes of Dawson's Creek, the most explicit show on teen sexuality, on the WB network. Parents, always the last to keep up, are now almost totally pre-empted. Chris (not his real name...
...filled with a largely elderly audience. Rich blue purple velvet and white tie tuxes dominated the stage in both the orchestra and choir, providing a beautiful setting for the soloists' brocades, sequins, taffeta and diamonds. Nor did the non-musical excitement end there. A brief intermission provided opportunity to eavesdrop on the gossip of the very nattiest of the old Boston families or enjoy a cigar or rose in the lounge...