The Ease of Eavesdropping

Blue-Tooth Ear piece © by RambergMediaImages

I was intrigued by a commercial for a personal sound amplifier that can allow a person to hear voices and sounds up to 90 feet away. Discreet because it resembles a Blue Tooth and fits in one’s ear, the amplifier is supposedly a great help when one attends movies, plays and sporting events.  It is also good for eavesdropping on conversations. The commercial doesn’t call it eavesdropping, but when one person listens in on a private dialogue between two people across a room for his or her own amusement or gain, that is eavesdropping.

In the commercial, a girl wearing the amplifier and, of course, a skimpy bikini walks by two other young women who are lounging at a pool. The first lounging girl says, “Look at her, she has the perfect body.” The second girl nods in agreement, and the chick wearing the eavesdropping device smiles slyly to herself because she knows that they don’t know that she has heard their conversation.

How hard up for compliments must this bikini girl be that she needs to parade past people hoping someone compliments her figure?  Before anyone else buys this amplification device, allow me to clue you in on the real conversation that would take place between two young women who are ogling the body of a third in a totally competitive fashion.

“Look at her in that bikini. Who does she think she is?  I think I see cellulite. Yeah, I definitely see cottage cheese bumps.”

“Oh, you are so right. There is a lot of cellulite and look at her abs – they are not so great.  Hey, do I look better than her in my bikini or do I look like that woman on the raft in the pool?  NOOOOO, I don’t look like her do I? Tell me I look better!”

Suddenly that sound amplifier doesn’t sound so great, does it? I hope the chick in the bikini wearing the sound amplifier hears a lot of nasty stuff. Why? Because she didn’t think it was a tiny bit immoral to eavesdrop on someone else’s conversation.

Back to why this As-Seen-On-TV product interested me. About a month ago, my left ear stopped working. Wax, water, allergies — who the hell knows what fell into my inner ear and set up permanent residence. I am not concerned as long as it doesn’t turn out to be that bug from the Star Trek movies that crawls inside an ear and slowly eats away at the brain.  I know it’s not that because I think my brain might be fast food for a bug like that and it would have exited weeks ago to find better nourishment. Anyway, being the medical coward I am, I have tried everything from ear drops to witch hazel on a cotton ball, to jumping up and down for hours at a time to rid myself of the clog.  If I thought Drano would work, I would do that. However, after a month of annoying my family with the phrase, “What did you say?” and feeling like I am 90 years old, I have made an appointment for my doctor to deal with this.

But then I saw this commercial and I re-thought my doctor plans.  I realized I could live with the amplifier and not have to go to the doctor, but alas, my husband nixed this idea.  He didn’t even cave when I told him that we could have two amplifiers for the price of one (separate shipping and handling fees do apply), and he could have his own eavesdropping earpiece as well.

This is the difference between men and women. If I offered this deal to any of my girlfriends, they would have jumped at it, but my husband, responded “I have no desire to hear what anyone else is saying.”

Well, good for him. Just out of spite, I might not tell him when my ear is cleared out. I just might ignore him and everything he says for a few more months under the pretense I cannot hear.  Why not? He has been doing that to me since the day we got married.

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7 thoughts on “The Ease of Eavesdropping”

  1. I wonder if I could use this to eavesdrop on my boss, since I sit right outside her office. This would not officially count as eavesdropping. This would be “job-related information gathering.”

  2. I think you probably need ear candeling. They melt wax in the ear and it unclogs things. Not sure on the specifics but it’s very big here in California.

    I wouldn’t want that amplifier because you KNOW people are not going to say nice things when we walk by and then the self-esteem would plummet. But you get one and tell us how it goes!

    1. She might also benefit from an ear cleaning (by the doctor, with real medical equipment) and maybe some antibiotics.

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