Complete Guide to Spying NaBloPoMo Day 4

While writing the headline of this post, I sat for a second figuring out what day of NaBloPoMo this is. And then I realized there’s a formula. It’s the date. Welcome to Day 4, November 4th.

Last night I was talking to Jens about the roughly 11 words Tom knows in Swedish. Or knows in Sort-of Swedish. One of Tom's top words is “smyglistna” which means literally to sneak a listen. Eavesdropping, if you will. 

photo-credit: englishandculture.com/blog/bid/87505/
Getting-Around-Town-Advice-on-Transportation-in-the-U-S

Except Tom could never remember smyglistna so I gave him a helpful tip, “Just think of Smegel from Lord of the Rings.” So now Tom says, “Smegel-listna.” I’ve stopped correcting him.

Jens was like, “Of all possible words, why smyglistna?” Excellent question with an even better answer. Tom and I spy on strangers. A lot. We sit in restaurants or walk down the sidewalk and Tom leans over and says very very quietly (even though no one else in the known universe including Scandinavia would have a shredded clue what he’s talking about) he whispers with quality pronunciation, “SMEGEL-LISTNA.”

And then we both go silent and strain our ears to catch a bead on whatever is going on over there. It could be a juicy lovers quarrel or someone talking about how his hair got stuck in the subway doors and he will never go out with man-bun ever again. 

Top 5 Things to Consider when Spying on Strangers

1. Glass is reflective. You must take this into account when blatantly staring at someone with their back to you, who you think can’t see you, but maybe they can. There are a lot of windows in this city.
2. People with tattoos, especially big tattoos, are always scanning their perimeter looking for people looking at their ink. This could get you nabbed even if you’re merely trying to listen in on their conversation.
3. It's best to pretend to tinker around with your phone or look over the menu or theater program when deeply engaged in spying. You have to find something to do with your gaze other than stare weirdly at your water glass or the back of some old guy’s head or right into the eyes of your person of interest.
4.  It’s very difficult to spy on people on the sidewalk who speed up and slow down a lot, or even worse those who pause to do a little face-to-face fingerwagging. If you keep speeding up and slowing down in pace with them, it's really utterly obvious you are spying.
5. Spying on people walking toward you the opposite direction will usually only net about 5 words, but most often, that's enough. Usually you catch something like, "I just keep doing it until I bleed," or "And then I was like, is that what you're wearing to brunch?"

Do I ever worry about strangers spying on me? Nah. No one knows me and all words from people we don't know live on their own, like a hole full of eggs hatching in the sand and no one knows or cares who begat them.