Will You Kindly Shut Up?

This morning I attended an orientation meeting for a volunteer position at a local hospital. Besides me there were seven other volunteers and the group leader. We were seated at a round conference table and directed to, in turn, introduce ourselves and explain why we were hoping to volunteer.  Each person spoke for about a minute. Then came the guy right before me, who told us his life story and his wife's life story and all about his wife's last days and how she was his soul mate and he's retired and she had COPD and he watched her die, but at the same time he had leukemia and was on chemotherapy and she died on the last day of his chemo and now he is in remission and it was so horrible and he's not getting any younger and then about his seven grandchildren and his fourteen grandchildren and two more in the oven, until I wanted to wring his scrawny little neck, but of course I did not and nobody else did either, and despite all the shuffling of feet and looking at watches and rolling of eyes, he went on and on. I wanted to say "This is not group therapy," but of course I did not.

Some people talk too much and don't even notice that you are not listening anymore, which is very rude if you ask me.  When this happens during a phone call you can at least be productive while the person self-indulges. My friend Nancy was one of those, and when she called I would just continue with my cooking or painting or washing the floor or even watching TV with the mute button on, every so often weighing in with an "uh-huh" or a "no kidding!" and she was quite happy. Once I hinted at the problem and never heard from her again, and that was three years ago so I think she was offended. Try as you might, there's simply no nice way to say "shut up!" But when the overly verbose natter on about this and that in the flesh, forcing innocent bystanders to witness the random thoughts spilling out of their brains onto the sidewalk, it's a different story altogether.

If you know someone who talks too much, help them stop. You could even get them an iPhone App called a Talk-o-Meter that will prove they talk too much, and avoid that nasty ending I had with Nancy. Check it out at http://www.talk-o-meter.de/e/.