Now YOU listen to ME

I’m normally an upbeat person.

Not all of the above is true.

There is something that, as I get older and meet more people, I am having an increasingly difficult time with.  And I realize that I am going to sound like some aged old man in a coffee shop that has forgotten his hearing aid and so is having to shout his conversation to his lunch mate as I unload this, but it does bear unloading.

Conversation skills: they’re important.  I’m going to go a bit further and say that they might be one of the more important skills that we possess.  How we interact with other people, how we move through the workaday world, how we express ourselves to people in our inner periphery of intimacy: it’s integral.  If we are heavy handed, if we aren’t engaged, if we are perceived as being absent the person with whom we are communicating can be hurt, feel misunderstood or alienated.

I’m 35 and fairly loquacious.  I didn’t use to be that way: I used to be shy.  I used to deflect conversation away from me because I didn’t want to express myself truthfully.  No one gains when that happens – you instead have meaningless, stilted conversations.

My grandmother’s husband, after meeting Michael, deemed him a “good conversationalist”.  It becomes funny if you actually know my grandmother’s husband: he is one of the worst conversationalists I have ever met.  He repeats himself (granted, this could be his age).  He assumes that we are vastly interested in whatever it is that he wants to show us or discuss (which he has often shown us or discussed with us before), but more interestingly he talks about himself.  Copiously.

I will interject here that this blog post is the literary equivalent of verbal diarrheal, but: a) you can choose not to read it; and b) I am a good conversationalist when with someone face to face.

Back to my grandmother’s husband.  He will talk about himself and his experiences for a considerable amount of time – and often it is very interesting – but he directs naught but the most scant inquiries in our direction before, ultimately, rerouting the conversation back to him.

Again, one could attribute this to age or senility, but both Michael and I have encountered this in our personal and work lives with people our own age.  Michael has a co-worker who, when asked how his weekend was, will lean against Michael’s desk and tell him exactly how his weekend was for ten minutes.  And then walk away.

I find it fascinating that at 35 or 45 years of age some people don’t get basic civility.  I often wonder how it is that these people have made it this far in life and that they have jobs and friends because I find them slightly socially retarded.  Actually: strike "slightly".

I wonder, also, about the pathology behind someone that can talk seemingly endlessly about themselves without feeling the sense of one-sidedness in the conversation.  It’s like the time the CFO at work asked one of my coworkers how her weekend was (to be polite, which I guess we ought not do unless we quite seriously mean it) and she started to tell him about the most meaningless, mundane drivel and I watched as his body language changed and he all but started to step backwards towards his office.  I saw this.  I saw his disinterest and his negative posture and still my co-worker went on in great detail and, when finished, failed to reciprocate.

People are interesting.  I have met so many wonderful, diverse, well travelled, well spoken, thoughtful and considerate people in my life.  I love talking to people.  I love talking to people that are different than me or have had vastly different life experiences because I find it fascinating and educational.  I have had conversations until 4am in the morning on numerous occasions.  When Michael and I first started dating we would talk on the phone every night for an hour. 

So what is it then when someone absolutely dominates a conversation?  Do they think that what they have to say is worth more than what I have to say?  Do they not have a single thing to ask me?  Do they not care how I am?  Have they come to the conclusion that I have nothing to contribute, or that nothing I can say or add to the conversation will enrich it in any way?

I like asking people about their lives and their experiences.  I genuinely want to know how they are.  And when people do not ask the same of me I think it is because they have decided that I’m not worth asking.  This point was adeptly driven home yesterday when, during my coffee break, a co-worker routinely interrupted me within the fifteen minute span.  I would start to talk about something and the conversation would be rapidly hijacked.  I am not an aggressive person and I will usually defer and relinquish whatever I was trying to say, but yesterday I continued talking.  And so did she.  And I would say we both talked simultaneously for about five or ten seconds. 
As I was driving in to work today I became increasingly agitated by this, but then I though “what do I do about it?”.  Do I point out to my co-worker that she continually interrupts me?  If she hasn’t realized that this is rude behaviour by this point in her life who am I to point it out?  Do I insert myself forcefully into one-sided conversations when no one has asked how my weekend was, or what my impending travel plans are, or how my mother is?  Obviously if they wanted to know, they would ask.

Or maybe I should just spend less time with narcissists and bad conversationalists.