I always prefer to stand just out of earshot. It helps keep me from listening to things I shouldn't hear.

The irony is that I come from a family of eavesdroppers, the type who never bring a book to a cafe because they get all the drama they need out of table-next-door conversations. They steal stories from the air, pillage the excitement of other people's lives without any of the consequences. I can't bear it. I can't stomach adopting histories and myths I have no right to carry. I learned the hard way not to let myself cross that line again.

Christ, I'm getting ahead of myself. You don't even know me yet, and it's wrong of me to assume your quiet glances to the talkative table sitting to our right are evidence of any sort of banter heist. It would be better of me to introduce myself and distract you naturally than to accuse you outright of an ignorant crime. My name is Robin Connor, and I am very, very glad that you want to hear my story.

The part you're interested in started when I committed that very same crime. I was walking home one night, and I found myself standing next to two young men—they must have been around your age, maybe a year or two older than I was at the time—waiting for the light to change at a quiet intersection. They weren't talking loudly, but I was standing a bit too close, close enough to make out their words. One of them was boasting to the other. Apparently, his high school dropout brother had been making it big in New York City, working at a new type of marketing firm that was hiring anybody who could read and write. "He's clearing six figures easy," the young man said, "and that's an entry level position."

The problem with hearing someone else's story is that you miss all of the context. And so, hearing what I heard, and missing what I missed, I packed up and moved straight to the World's City. I had no ties latching me to this town; I was uneducated, I was broke. The promise of a stranger's story at a red light was enough to pull my feet off the ground and launch me towards glorious destiny. By the time I reached the big glass doors of Big Future Marketing, they were boarded up and defaced. The fraudulent operation that propelled the brother to wealth had been shut down, and likely left him on the streets or in jail.

My luck hadn't been quite so fruitful. So I took to walking, hoping that another bolt of lightning would strike, that another flash of overheard excitement would lead me on a new journey. And this time, I wasn't at the mercy of the few other youngsters roaming my small Ohio town. No, this time, I had the vast battery of New York City to power my adventure; a trove of stories so deep that I was almost guaranteed to strike gold.

It didn't take two weeks for me to end up in earshot of another spilling mouth. The woman was standing in front of a window with a "Now Hiring!" sign flashing in plain view, and she was talking quite loudly to no one. Or at least, it seemed no one was listening—except me, of course. She captivated me instantly, because she was talking about how to get money.

I approached her with a distinct lack of caution—a result of what had felt like an eternity of waiting for something, even though it couldn't have been more than twelve days or so—and she interrupted me before I could lift a hand. "Hi, my name is Anna. Anna Fisher. Are you interested in making some good money with no degree required?" Anna thrust a bright green flier at my chest, one that she had just a moment before been waving excitedly in the air, an over-practiced smile plastering her face. I took the flier and offered her my hand. "Robin Connor," I said, vainly trying to hide the glee from my voice. "And I am definitely interested in making some money."

The next day I showed up for work. I sat just behind the "Now Hiring!" sign in the window and wrote carefully scripted letters to what I was told were important people—the rich and the powerful. I never asked what they were for, I never even paid enough attention to what I was writing to even begin to piece together the scheme I was a pawn in. All I cared about was the envelope of dirty cash that Anna handed me every Friday. It was more than enough to get by, and I felt that I must be living the American Dream.

I had been working there for three months before the police busted down the door, grabbed my papers and put me in cuffs. I don't remember much about the trial process, it was all a blur. It felt like the wallpaper of my life was being torn down just as I had finally finished putting it up. My story was ending, and it wouldn't even be worth overhearing. The two things I can recall are my public defender explaining that I was being charged with tax related offenses, even though I had no knowledge of the wider fraud conspiracy that I contributed to; and seeing Anna Fisher escorted out of the courtroom, crying, before my final hearing. That was the last time I ever saw her.

I ended up in a low security prison a few miles outside the city. The details are unimportant, what matters is that I did not understand what the other inmates around me understood. I was too naive for prison.

With nothing much to do, I started listening again. It seemed to be the only thing that I knew myself for doing. I stood out in the courtyard during rec time, thinking, third time's the charm. Eventually, another story fell onto my ears. A couple other young inmates, whispering loudly about the infamous Big Hugo. "I just wanna see someone put hands on him," one of them laughed. "Just land one punch and that guy would be king, that's all I'm saying."

My heart started pounding. This could be it, this could be my way to make my own story, to finally be worth something beyond what I got from others. I could be king, I could be king! Like that, my mind was made up—I would get my hands on Big Hugo and I would have my own mythology, a story worth eavesdropping on. Just like those boys said.

But I had only listened to their words, not their laughs. The next day I strutted quickly and confidently towards Big Hugo, my fists clenched, and then I was on the floor. My vision went blurry and my head swam in a sea of pain, and then the hailstorm came. It felt like an avalanche from all sides, the hard rubber of boots like boulders crushing my flesh and bone again and again and again. The rocks kept falling as all of the light disappeared. Suddenly, I woke up in a hospital bed. A doctor told me I was in a coma for a month and a half.

By the time I was released from the hospital, I had been granted parole. I took the job they found for me. I spent my free time sitting and thinking: where had I gone wrong? What had been my mistake? Once I figured it out, I started sitting in cafes, training myself not to listen, to let the myriad experiences around me flow on their paths without disturbing my own. And I started to realize that all this time, I had been stealing stories that weren't mine, appropriating other's experiences to my own life even when they didn't fit. Stealing has consequences. It's not right and it has consequences.

So when I saw your ad asking for stories about listening, I was more than eager to share mine. I don't think the journalism you do is stealing stories in the same way—journalism has context, pillaged street banter doesn't. And it is always dangerous to listen without context.

That's why I prefer to stand just out of earshot. That way I don't listen to anything I really shouldn't hear.