I am an unashamed and unabashed people-watcher and eavesdropper. I have been known to lean so far backwards at a restaurant in my efforts to listen in to the neighbouring table's conversation, that I have almost overbalanced and become an unexpected and uninvited intruder at their lunch. I make no apologies for this. People interest me, and if they choose to discuss topics that fascinate their fellow diners then they should expect people like me to listen in. I am convinced that the world is full of listeners- in, but most people won't admit their proclivities to be inquisitive. I, on the other hand, will. So if you want to discuss your plan to murder your mother-in-law, or your friend's secret plastic surgery, or how you successfully scammed the tax man in my vicinity, let it be known that I will be listening.
I think that this could stem from growing up in a small town where everybody knew everybody else's business. Added to this was the small town telephone exchange. I am very well aware that anyone born in the last forty years probably has no idea what I am talking about, so let me enlighten you. The telephone exchange was something akin to the reception desk at a large corporation. A room at the local post office housed the exchange. Every telephone line in the town was routed through this central place. The operators, known as "the exchange" , answered every call and connected the caller with whatever number they asked for. So you would pick up the telephone at home, actually turn a handle, and wait for the voice to answer, "Number please; nommer asseblief?", whereupon you asked for the number you wanted to be put through to. Yes, it was the dark ages, but stop sniggering! We only got tv in South Africa in 1976, and that for only two hours a night, so we entertained ourselves by watching the test pattern for the half hour or so before the programming began.
I digress. Back to the exchange! Now that you have stopped grinning, let me continue. It was a well-known fact that "the exchange", and by that we meant the operator, listened in on conversations. People were known to deliberately fabricate rumours for the sheer entertainment value of knowing that "the exchange" was swallowing it hook, line, and sinker!! Added to this was "the party line." This invention of hell arose because there weren't enough lines to go around, so several people shared lines. The idea was that each house on a party line had a coded ring, so in theory, only the person who was supposed to pick up the call should answer. Oh, really? In a small town inhabited by people who HAD to know their neighbours' business, that horse was dead in the stalls. You could actually hear excited breathing at any particularly interesting snippet of information, as the listener forgot to cover the mouthpiece with her hand! Who got engaged, who was pregnant, who had been taken to hospital, who had a new car - "the exchange" and the party-liners were a mine of information!!
Our lives were open books, read by all. I have fond memories of some of the eccentric characters who populated my world. One such individual, and I use that word advisedly, was an elderly woman by the name of Mary Fenwick. Mary was in her late fifties or early sixties, but with no make-up, long, wispy, greying hair worn long or in a mostly undone bun, she seemed more like a hundred years old to a young child. She was a devout Anglican, in charge of the flowers, the tea, and sundry other self-imposed chores in the beautiful old stone church across the road from our house. My family only ever attended this church when any of us were christened or married, but I encountered Mary daily because the primary school was easy to reach if one took a short cut through the church grounds. My brother and I fell foul of her on a few occasions because we both, to our adult shame as we are now both bird lovers, shot birds with our air rifles! Mary chased us, wispy hair flying as the hair pins anchoring her bun lost the battle and fell out, shouting very un-Anglican threats at us as we fled.
But one thing consumed Mary, whom we had been taught to address courteously as "Miss Fenwick", and that was marriage! She had never married, and this was an ISSUE!! No one needed to listen in to her telephone conversations to find this out, because Mary was frank and forthright in her denunciation of any widow or divorcee who dared to remarry. "Blasted woman!" she declared to me one day as I was making my way past the church door, where Mary, arms full of flowers, her face more flushed than normal, nearly knocked me over. I gathered that I, at age ten, was not the blasted woman referred to, so I politely waited for the rest of the imprecation. Sure enough it burst out of her. "Blasted, blasted woman! This is her SECOND husband. Why can't she leave them for the rest of us?" Guessing that this was a rhetorical question I edged away, leaving her to enter the church and arrange her flowers for the bitterly resented blasted woman's second wedding!
Mary was only one of the highly individual people in our town. My own godmother declared my name to be Genevieve Antoinette at my christening, requiring a speedy intervention from my mother, so that I can now write Fiona Patricia instead of my godmother's choice of names. I honestly don't know WHAT my parents were thinking to choose this woman to be my godmother. She was slightly more odd than Mary Fenwick, and her father, a highly educated man, was the town drunk. He attended the local Methodist church, usually inebriated, held his hymnal upside down, but managed to sing all the correct words with great gusto. The only problem was that he occasionally helped himself to the offering as the plate went past, and sometimes encouraged the boarding school children in the church to "Sing, you little blighters, sing!!"
No doubt I could reminisce all night about the sundry characters whom I encountered in our small town, but will desist. I must say that this upbringing instilled in me my deep fascination with people, and I can never be bored. To this day I watch strangers and friends alike with great interest. It is a huge pity, in my opinion, that we are so wrapped up in technology that we are more absorbed in our cell phones than with real, live people, and thus we miss out on the gloriously varied people whom God has placed in our own individual spheres of life. It would be a wonderful idea to have a techno-free sabbath once a week. Just imagine the entertainment in actually watching and listening to people with no distraction!
And the point to all of this? Yes, I do have a point. God is intensely interested in us. He leans down from His throne to listen in on our conversations, even those we have with ourselves. He picks up every call, because we have no private lines. He does this because He wants to know every detail, not because He is a celestial eavesdropper, but because He loves us so much that even if we are a Mary Fenwick, agonizing over our single status, or an oddball trying to palm off our favourite names on someone else's child, or a drunk singing hymns from an upside down hymnal, we are loved by the only One Who truly knows and understands us. So, as we go about living our lives, may the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be a joy to our heavenly Eavesdropper.
Here's to you, in all your wonderful uniqueness.
God bless, Fiona Patricia Des Fontaine. (Thankfully not Genevieve Antoinette Des Fontaine)
I think that this could stem from growing up in a small town where everybody knew everybody else's business. Added to this was the small town telephone exchange. I am very well aware that anyone born in the last forty years probably has no idea what I am talking about, so let me enlighten you. The telephone exchange was something akin to the reception desk at a large corporation. A room at the local post office housed the exchange. Every telephone line in the town was routed through this central place. The operators, known as "the exchange" , answered every call and connected the caller with whatever number they asked for. So you would pick up the telephone at home, actually turn a handle, and wait for the voice to answer, "Number please; nommer asseblief?", whereupon you asked for the number you wanted to be put through to. Yes, it was the dark ages, but stop sniggering! We only got tv in South Africa in 1976, and that for only two hours a night, so we entertained ourselves by watching the test pattern for the half hour or so before the programming began.
I digress. Back to the exchange! Now that you have stopped grinning, let me continue. It was a well-known fact that "the exchange", and by that we meant the operator, listened in on conversations. People were known to deliberately fabricate rumours for the sheer entertainment value of knowing that "the exchange" was swallowing it hook, line, and sinker!! Added to this was "the party line." This invention of hell arose because there weren't enough lines to go around, so several people shared lines. The idea was that each house on a party line had a coded ring, so in theory, only the person who was supposed to pick up the call should answer. Oh, really? In a small town inhabited by people who HAD to know their neighbours' business, that horse was dead in the stalls. You could actually hear excited breathing at any particularly interesting snippet of information, as the listener forgot to cover the mouthpiece with her hand! Who got engaged, who was pregnant, who had been taken to hospital, who had a new car - "the exchange" and the party-liners were a mine of information!!
Our lives were open books, read by all. I have fond memories of some of the eccentric characters who populated my world. One such individual, and I use that word advisedly, was an elderly woman by the name of Mary Fenwick. Mary was in her late fifties or early sixties, but with no make-up, long, wispy, greying hair worn long or in a mostly undone bun, she seemed more like a hundred years old to a young child. She was a devout Anglican, in charge of the flowers, the tea, and sundry other self-imposed chores in the beautiful old stone church across the road from our house. My family only ever attended this church when any of us were christened or married, but I encountered Mary daily because the primary school was easy to reach if one took a short cut through the church grounds. My brother and I fell foul of her on a few occasions because we both, to our adult shame as we are now both bird lovers, shot birds with our air rifles! Mary chased us, wispy hair flying as the hair pins anchoring her bun lost the battle and fell out, shouting very un-Anglican threats at us as we fled.
But one thing consumed Mary, whom we had been taught to address courteously as "Miss Fenwick", and that was marriage! She had never married, and this was an ISSUE!! No one needed to listen in to her telephone conversations to find this out, because Mary was frank and forthright in her denunciation of any widow or divorcee who dared to remarry. "Blasted woman!" she declared to me one day as I was making my way past the church door, where Mary, arms full of flowers, her face more flushed than normal, nearly knocked me over. I gathered that I, at age ten, was not the blasted woman referred to, so I politely waited for the rest of the imprecation. Sure enough it burst out of her. "Blasted, blasted woman! This is her SECOND husband. Why can't she leave them for the rest of us?" Guessing that this was a rhetorical question I edged away, leaving her to enter the church and arrange her flowers for the bitterly resented blasted woman's second wedding!
Mary was only one of the highly individual people in our town. My own godmother declared my name to be Genevieve Antoinette at my christening, requiring a speedy intervention from my mother, so that I can now write Fiona Patricia instead of my godmother's choice of names. I honestly don't know WHAT my parents were thinking to choose this woman to be my godmother. She was slightly more odd than Mary Fenwick, and her father, a highly educated man, was the town drunk. He attended the local Methodist church, usually inebriated, held his hymnal upside down, but managed to sing all the correct words with great gusto. The only problem was that he occasionally helped himself to the offering as the plate went past, and sometimes encouraged the boarding school children in the church to "Sing, you little blighters, sing!!"
No doubt I could reminisce all night about the sundry characters whom I encountered in our small town, but will desist. I must say that this upbringing instilled in me my deep fascination with people, and I can never be bored. To this day I watch strangers and friends alike with great interest. It is a huge pity, in my opinion, that we are so wrapped up in technology that we are more absorbed in our cell phones than with real, live people, and thus we miss out on the gloriously varied people whom God has placed in our own individual spheres of life. It would be a wonderful idea to have a techno-free sabbath once a week. Just imagine the entertainment in actually watching and listening to people with no distraction!
And the point to all of this? Yes, I do have a point. God is intensely interested in us. He leans down from His throne to listen in on our conversations, even those we have with ourselves. He picks up every call, because we have no private lines. He does this because He wants to know every detail, not because He is a celestial eavesdropper, but because He loves us so much that even if we are a Mary Fenwick, agonizing over our single status, or an oddball trying to palm off our favourite names on someone else's child, or a drunk singing hymns from an upside down hymnal, we are loved by the only One Who truly knows and understands us. So, as we go about living our lives, may the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be a joy to our heavenly Eavesdropper.
Here's to you, in all your wonderful uniqueness.
God bless, Fiona Patricia Des Fontaine. (Thankfully not Genevieve Antoinette Des Fontaine)
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