Seven-year-old girl: Daddy! You wanna hear a secret?!
Dad: Sure, but remember honey: I’m a social worker so if this is a secret about you hurting yourself or others I have to report it.
Seven-year-old girl: … Never mind.
–LaGuardia Airport
Overheard by: Jessica
Really tall kid: Then my mom said I couldn’t use condoms anymore.
Really tall friend: … Way for that guy to hear you.
–Hilton Hotel
Little girl, adorably: So, this hand is right and this one is left?
Mom: No, it’s the other way around.
Little girl: But you said before! You said this was the right and this was the left!
Mom: Well, if I’m facing you –
Little girl, exasperated : Mother, I really don’t want to talk to you about this anymore.
–LIRR
Overheard by: Marissa
Six-year-old boy: I’m excited! Pizza, pizza, pizza!
Father: How do you spell “pizza”?
Six-year-old boy: P…I… Z… Z… O?
Father: Close, son. Try again.
Six-year-old boy: F?
Father: No…
Six-year-old boy: Q? G? L? [starting to cry.] I just don’t know!
–110th & Broadway
Dramatic student hipster: I’m just trying to get my life back together. You know when you’re trying to get your life back together after one of those periods of being away for awhile without contact to the world, thinking about your direction and what you’re doing.
Friend: Do you mean your family vacation?
Dramatic student hipster: Well, yeah.
Friend: It was three days.
–Bagel Zone, 3rd & Ave A
Overheard by: Cpt Kate
Little boy: Daddy, daddy! I wanna make a bear!
Buff dad: Nigga, I done told you a thousand times, thugs don’t make bears! [Tiny black boy bursts into tears.]
–Outside of Build a Bear Workshop, at 6th St & 5th Ave
Overheard by: Becca
Little girl to her father: Stop telling me that! I’m not adopted!
Father: But sometimes I wish you were.
–Multiplex Cinemas, Flushing
Overheard by: Ms. Hazard
Teenage girl: My mom is always walkin’ in on me having sex. I’m all like, mom what the fuck, I’m all having sex. Get the fuck out.
Teenage boy: Oh daaamn, I hate that. I always turn the music up real loud so my mom can’t hear me fuck. I fucked my girl to that Akon song. I was in her so deep and that shit was just pumpin’!
Girl: Ohh daaamn.
Boy: You need to tell your mom to get all out yo shit.
Girl: Yeah, she’s always walkin’ in right in the middle and I’m all like, mom get out. Then she tells me she didn’t know, and I’m like, mom I don’t got to tell you every time I’m having sex.
–Target, Brooklyn
Overheard by: Nate
Hobo: Hey, contribute to the marijuana cause!
Rock kid: No, that’s okay.
Hobo: I know you smoke — your parents don’t know, but I know, and so do you.
–Waverly Theater, 6th Ave
Professor #1, reading from card: There is a chair available for your monologues. Do not stand on the chair. Do not throw the chair.
Applicants and parents: [Laugh.]Professor #1: Do not disrobe.
Applicants and parents: [Laugh harder.]Professor #2: You laugh, but they’re on that card for a reason.
–NYU
Overheard by: ZB
