Originally published by The Clifton Courier, March 17, 2022

Yeah, look, I’ve been a bit slack lately. Whattaya gonna do about it?!

I lost my headphones the other day and felt completely exposed without them. 

I do shift work. Which means I work weird hours. Which leaves me with a lot in-between time before or after starting work when there’s no one around to hang out with. 

And if I’m not careful, I’ll spend that time sitting on the couch scrolling through second-hand sales listings looking for some weird item to fill the void in my heart, wasting my time and my money. Don’t get me wrong, I love the tiny boomerang-shaped side table I spent far too much money on, but I could have done far more fun, more productive or more restful things with that time and could have better spent that money on… literally everything else.

So I send myself outside like a stressed out parent just wanting some peace and quiet. 

I’ll make myself put on a light-hearted podcast and go for a stroll around the neighbourhood.

It’s quite a nice way to spend a quiet afternoon, so I’ve really been making a habit of it over the past year or so. 

But the other day, when I couldn’t find my headphones, I wasn’t able to re-listen to my favourite podcast that dissects each season of Sex and the City as “the great American novel it truly is” (it’s basically authors Dolly Alderton and Caroline O’Donoghue getting tipsy and talking about how much they love the show, it’s an absolute joy to listen to and I honestly couldn’t recommend it enough – when I tell people it saved my life, I’m not joking at all). 

I just had to go on a walk without having anything to listen to, but, perhaps even more importantly, without being visibly listening to anything except the world around me. Headphones aren’t just something you can listen to someone espousing theories about the psychology of Miranda Hobbes through, they’re an indication, they’re a social prop.

And let me tell you, going for a walk without the social prop of headphones felt really weird to me. 

Because when I go out for a walk, I’m not huffing and puffing down the street like Kath and Kel on a power walk. 

I’m taking it very easy. I’m pottering along. I am in no hurry to get anywhere – because the whole reason I’m out walking is because I have nowhere to be. And I have a rather short stride, so it takes me a while to get from one end of the street to another.

And that’s fine. 

Because if you’re doing this while wearing headphones, you look like you’re “out for a walk”. They’re a visual signifier that you’re shuffling down the street as an act of light exercise. They tell onlookers that not only are you minding your own business, you’re too wrapped up in your own little world to notice them.

Headphones are like an invisibility cloak of social acceptability that immediately reduce a person’s threatening aura. 

People don’t pause or quieten their conversations when you pass closely by. 

They don’t give you suss looks when you pass them in their front yards. 

They think nothing of you looking into their garages as you pass.

But without headphones, that purpose for being out and about is less clear.

I felt like I had to keep my distance from groups of people chatting along the path, otherwise it would look like I was trying to listen to their conversation. 

I felt like I was casing the joint of every place I walked past. 

In general, I felt like I looked like I was out having a big sticky beak. 

And, don’t get me wrong, I’m doing that when I’m listening to podcasts too – you can listen to two women discuss the significance of fillet of fish burger splattered on Mr Big’s kitchen wall wall AND judge people on the contents on their garage. 

And I will regularly subtly pause whatever I’m listening to in order to overhear the juicy conversations of passers by if they seem worth listening to. 

But without the magic of my headphones, I can’t away with it and that really saps the magic out of a long afternoon walk.