Okay, this was um — the story that I’m thinking of was a time when I tried to be very quiet to remain undetected and I was successful and I was very sorry. So, I was still in grad school, but I had a really good job working in, in an office on campus here. And, uh, I was working late. I don’t know if I was working on my job itself, or I might’ve been working on stuff for — you know, as a, as a grad student, sometimes I would work on my school work there, and they were, they were fine with that. That wasn’t a problem. But anyway, it’s late at night and I hear one of the people who works there, um, come back into the office. Like, I had been completely alone for a couple of hours, but they — I don’t know if they’d been out to dinner or had gone to like the lo- — the movie theater that was downtown. But they came back. She came back and she had her husband with her.
And at first, I just was really quiet. I don’t know why I didn’t immediately make myself known to them. I think I thought they were just coming in, she was getting something, and they were gonna leave again, so that, that must have been it. So I didn’t make myself known to them. [‘Cause this was kind of in] the back office. And the way the office was laid out, if you were, like, where her office was, you couldn’t see whether lights are on or anything back in, in — like in my part of the office.
Well, they started to have an argument and it got really heated. And, if I’d known it was gonna turn out that way, maybe like the minute they started to bicker, I could’ve, like, made some noise or something, and then pretended I hadn’t really heard anything they’d said, and then that would have just ended it. But then, I didn’t and again I just sat there hoping that they would, um, you know, wrap it up quickly and go. But it was quite an argument. And she was really crying and emotional, and she was talking to him about, um, you know, how this was so indicative of his personality and these deep issues she felt he had psychologically, so, it wasn’t just that I was overhearing, a — an argument, which I consider private. I also felt like I was hearing really intimate details about their relationship and her husband who I’d met but, you know, I certainly wasn’t looking for a psychological dossier on.
Um, oh my gosh, it was so awkward. And I just felt like I was dying inside. And I also felt trapped. Because once they had — it was — once they started getting really loud, um, I — there was no way I could have pretended that I didn’t hear the content and they — what they were saying. So I just had to hole up and stay back there until they left. They — I had no way of exiting the office without being obvious and tipping them off. So, anyway, that’s why I said I was quiet and I wish I hadn’t been, if I — I wish I had not been undetected.