It might be triggered by something that has been tiptoeing around my mind for decades, or by something I overheard in the checkout queue in Tesco, but whatever it is, I have to try and answer the question: what does it feel like?
They might even want to copy down something they overheard, saw in an advertisement, heard in a song or even spray-painted on a building.
One day, she'll ask me about something she overheard the boys say at school, or a commercial she saw while watching her favorite show.
Half a bottle of Tylenol PM is far from a lethal dose, something I overheard later that night as I lay strapped to a gurney in a hospital room that was as close to a jail cell as I hope to ever get, the taste of charcoal lingering in my mouth -- used to treat patients for poison consumption -- and was a cry for help.
Advice from a 30-something father to his 3-something son, overheard by Ronnie Hammer at the Bronx Zoo's Flamingo Pub: "Now Jason, don't eat all those fries first.
He says that, among what he calls the urban elite, if anyone says something, or is overheard saying something, that is remotely politically incorrect, they lose their job.
What?" (Bridget and I hadn't been talking about it, so he couldn't have overheard something).
Roughly four years after his stint on the hymn committee, George Templeton Strong overheard something remarkable in the streets of New York.
She had overheard something I'd said on the phone; she wanted to know what was happening.
Before the information age the Chinese government could decide you were a counter-revolutionary just because a neighbour reported something they had overheard.
