I'm doing a little survey to find out more about ALE listeners. There are just four tiny questions. It will only take a minute or two, and will help me a LOT! Please check it out. Thanks, Cooper

👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇👇

CLICK HERE FOR THE SURVEY

Season 3 Episode 12

Thank you for downloading this episode.

👉The story begins at XXXX and the tiny lessons begin at XXXX

👉You can find the transcript after the Credits!

👉Visit our website to download the Podcast User's Manual and find out more! https://alittleenglish.com/

A Little English is written, produced, recorded, edited, mixed, mastered and scored by Edward Cooper Howland.

All stories are either in the public domain, or written by me.

Copyright 2024 Edward Cooper Howland

⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi. My name is Cooper, and this is…A Little English. Every episode, I read a short story. After the story, there are three tiny lessons. 

Today’s story is about gossip and scandal, and maybe some romance. In a retirement village. You know, an old folk’s home. Now you might think, “those people are old! They don’t do romance!” And let me tell you, that is not true. If you don’t believe me, just go ask google. Do a search, in English or in your first language about old people romances. But, uh. You have been warned. Old people get WILD.

Now, anyway, here’s my story about two best friends and their adventures in the retirement village. It’s called…..”Scandalous.”

—- 

"Karen," whispered Susan, in her best conspiracy voice, "has got a boyfriend."

"Karen who?" replied Dominic. He leaned in until Susan could smell the coffee on his breath . 

"Karen Friedlander. From Greenfield. She lives down the hall from me."

"How do you know?" 

"Well, you know how I don't sleep well anymore? I wake up at least twice a night to go to the bathroom, and then it takes me a long time to get back to sleep. Sometimes I'm laying there for an hour, just staring at the ceiling."

"I've been listening to podcasts. Do you know about podcasts? It really helps you fall asleep. You should-"

"Don't interrupt me, Dom. Now, where was I? Ah yes so last night, I heard him. It must have been two o'clock in the morning, and I heard him sneaking down the hall."

"Sneaking?"

"Yes, sneaking. Like tiptoeing. Like, not walking the way a security guard walks."

"So you heard someone walking-"

"Sneaking-"

"Sneaking in the hall, and you think that means Karen has a boyfriend?" Dominic leaned back, unimpressed. He took another sip of coffee.

"No!" Susan leaned in to him now. She put her hand on his knee. "I thought it was strange, because who goes walking around in here at two a.m? But then Karen opened her door. I know it was hers, because Jody's apartment is right next to mine, and it definitely wasn't that one. 

"What did she say?"

"She didn't say anything. But whoever it was, he went inside. There was no more sneaking around. I stayed up almost another hour, but I didn't hear anything."

"Well," Dominic leaned back, scratching his chin. He had shaved that morning, but had missed a few bits here and there. "Karen's got a boyfriend. Or. How do we know it's even a BOYfriend?"

Susan leaned back, her hand on her heart. 

"You think....you think....no..."

"I mean, why not? It's the twenty-first century, after all. Anything is possible. And people get so lonely around here."

"That would be....the biggest thing that has ever happened here. If we could find out who it is..."

"Everyone would come to us for details. We could be the king and queen of Shady Acres." Dominic touched his finger to his lips, and stared into the distance. "We need a plan."

 -----

"This is a stupid plan," whispered Susan into her phone. 

"I know it is, Susan, but it's the best we've got."

She sighed, set the phone to 'speaker' and put it down in her lap. "Who do you think it is?". 

"I really don't know. It could be anybody..." he waited a moment. "Maybe it's Betty."

"You really think it's a woman?"

"I hope so! It would be such a delicious scandal."

 "You old hound dog. Why Betty?"

"Well, ever since her husband died, the two of them have been spending a lot of time together."

"Of course they have. Betty's lonely. And so's Karen.

"Mmm-hmmm"

"Quit it. And she's only sixty-seven or whatever. I wish my Jim had died when I was still young and bouncy like she is."

"Well, you should have married a millionaire twice your age, like Karen did. Then you could have just inherited everything and had some fun before you got your hips replaced!"

"Shhhh! I hear someone coming." Susan got slowly out of her chair, muted her phone and placed it on the table next to the door. She looked out the peephole. 

"False alarm," she said. "It's just Jose from the front desk." 

She sat back down in her chair by the door and yawned. 

"Dominic?"

"Yes, Karen?"

"Why don't you have a boyfriend?"

"Well, my dear. At my age, in a place like this, there's not many fish in the sea, if you catch my drift. Most gentlemen pass on early, and those that remain....Well, they're not exactly the open minded type."

"More like, they're a bunch of conservative old creeps." She yawned again. 

"They're not so bad. They're just rich old white men who don't have long to live. A final affair with a...uh....'confirmed bachelor' like me would NOT be an appropriate end to Grandpa's story. Heck, their kids might put them into D house if they found out. And you know what happens in D house."

Susan felt her eyelids closing. She fought to keep them open, but it was after midnight. Maybe if she just rested them for a moment.

"Nothing happens in D house. Nothing happens and nothing keeps on happening and then you die."

------- 

When the phone vibrated in her lap, she woke up suddenly. Her head hit the door at the same moment that the phone hit the ground. How long had she been asleep? Had she missed the boyfriend? One hand patted around on the floor looking for the phone, while the other searched for her glasses. 

It was 12:56 in the morning. She'd been asleep for almost an hour! She was trying to figure out who had called her when she heard it outside.

The sound of sneaking. 

Someone was sneaking down the hallway. But to be honest, they weren't being very sneaky at all. 

It took a few seconds, but Susan finally found her glasses. She looked out the peephole while she rubbed the back of her head. 

She was too late. She could still hear the boyfriend sneaking badly down the hall, but he - or she - had already passed Susan's door. She couldn't see who it was!

She took a deep breath and turned the doorknob as quietly as she could. She eased the door open, inch by inch, afraid to even breathe. She got her head out the door, then one shoulder, then a leg. She could see into the hall. 

The boyfriend was a woman. A bizarre woman. A woman wrapped in so many scarves and shawls that Susan couldn't see anything about her. It definitely wasn't Betty. Betty had far too much style to ever dress like that, even at one AM. No, this person was doing their best to hide their identity. To disguise their face, and even their body. And they were right in front of Karen's door when it opened. 

Karen walked into the hallway in her flannel pajamas, her hair in curlers, and stared confused at the "boyfriend," who froze stiff and stared right back at her. 

"Uh," stammered the boyfriend. "Hey..baby?"

Susan said, "Dominic?"

Karen screamed.

Dominic ran straight to Susan, pushed past her and entered the apartment. The two of them fell against the wall as he locked the bolt on the door. In the hallway, they could hear other doors opening, sleepy retirees asking each other what the hell was going on at this hour, and Karen screaming that Dominic had lost his mind. 

“Well, what in the world do you think you’re doing?” Susan leaned on her chair and stared at him.

“I’m sorry, Susan! I couldn’t resist! It was just too delicious of a scandal. I thought that if I could convince you that Karen Friedlander had a girlfriend, then you’d convince everyone else. And you and I, we’d be the king and queen of the gossip kingdom!

Susan patted him on top of his bald head. 

“Oh, Dominic. You sweet, simple man. You’re gonna get your scandal, all right. You’re gonna be the biggest thing that ever happened around here.”

—-

Well so. How about that? Was that the ending you were expecting? Because I have to tell you, that was not the ending I had in mind when I started writing the story. But like I said before, these stories just kind of have a mind of their own. They do what they want. And this one got pretty weird. But I thought it was funny. Did you?

So before we go to the lessons, I have a little announcement. I’ve decided that I’m gonna keep doing shows every two weeks. I would prefer to do them every week, but I think it’s just too much pressure for me to write and record a new story every single week. Two weeks gives me enough time to think of something really original and interesting. So, maybe some day in the future, if I can get a LOT of stories written, I’ll go back to every week. But for now, it’s got to be every two weeks. Thank you for understanding. 

Anyway, how about some tiny lessons?

The Big Picture is, well, scandalous!

What was Dominic’s plan? WHat in the world was he thinking? Go back to the story or the transcript and answer it for yourself I’ll wait. He was thinking that if he dressed like a lady, and made sure Susan saw this mysterious lady going to Karen’s room, then Susan would gossip about it. And what amazing gossip that would be! Karen Friedlander has a girlfriend?? And Nobody knows who it is?? Oh my!

Now, be careful you don’t break your hip at the Dictionary Disco!

The first word for today is…peephole. That’s the little circle in the middle of your door that you can look out, to see who’s ringing the bell. It’s a hole that you peep through. A peephole!

And the second word is bachelor. A bachelor is a word for a single man. Easy. But what about “confirmed bachelor?” That’s an old phrase. Something that my parents or even their parents would say. Someone as old as the people in this story. And it means…gay. Right? You’re confirmed single. You’ll never get married to a woman. It was a polite way to say gay, back when gay was not a polite thing to say. 

And finally, let’s relax and have a Melody Moment. 

More intonation today. Listen to the way I said, “mmm-hmmm.” Here’s the thing. This is not words. It’s ONLY intonation. It’s just like a musical note. But it has a very specific meaning. It means, “I know that they’re lonely. And you know it too. And actually, i know that you can imagine those two becoming a couple, just as easily as I can imagine it. So stop playing games, you know they could be a couple.” Something like that. So that’s forty-two words, compacted into two musical notes. Intonation is POWERFUL.

 Let’s do the credits. 

Thank you for listening to Season 3 Episode12 of A Little English. 

Every episode is produced entirely by me, Edward Cooper Howland, here in Chiba, Japan.

If you like the show, tell someone about it! A recommendation from a friend is the best way to get someone to listen, and I would really appreciate it. 

This season, all the stories are written by…me! I use chatGPT by Openai.com as an editor because I can’t afford to hire a human. It’s an amazing, free piece of software, and you should check it out. 

Again, thank you  so much for listening.

For now, be kind to yourselves, and to each other.