Dream on, big talker
Years ago in my impressionable 20s, I had a boyfriend who dreamt his teeth fell out. Addicted to a bedside tome called “The Encyclopedia of Dreams,” I happily informed him it meant he talked too much. “Meeee?” I remember him saying. “Yooou,” I remember replying. He was clueless. There are lots of interpretations of that common dream, but oh how much did I love that one! Chatty Charlie was challenged to chill those chompers and I scored a chatalicious victory.
Usually, with over-talkers, you don’t get so lucky.
Whether it’s politics or the latest movie review or giant mushrooms growing on the lawn, we all seem to have a lot to communicate, which is good. So long as we don’t keep saying too much for too long which makes the rest of us willing to run to the dentist for root canal, which is bad.
“Maybe we’re being abused,” a friend said recently while discussing someone who didn’t know a hello from a harangue. “I’m worried about telling him and offending him and the whole time he’s offending me. That’s nuts.” He hit the drill on the incisor. So, for the sake of all of us with schedules and lives and opinions and bills to pay and mouths to feed and the gym and the housecleaning and did I mention sleep — what do you do when neighbors, colleagues, family and friends don’t get the message and spout on and on from roots to fangs leaving you crawling on the floor picking up their dentures?
We love some of these people, truly, but who needs to risk an encounter with loose pointy teeth. Am I going on? Sorry! Psychologists of course have different tricks on how to interrupt these loquacious prattlers: Say their names loudly to re-focus them, summarize and redirect, listen with compassionate eyes hoping they’ll feel heard and calm down, tell them upfront you have somewhere to go, try to get a word in before their next exhalation turns into a rant about dried peas or the cause of our existential discontent. Am I going on again? Why do I bring this up? Because maybe, after our big vote and our cloudy national climate, it’s our job to do something, that’s what my friend and I discuss. Just like it’s our job to vote or state our opinions and stand up for what we believe.
Could it be, we wonder, that the same part of us that can’t silence someone who doesn’t know a conversation from a soliloquy is the same part of us that can’t fully raise our own voices? Does it all go together like molars and peanut brittle?
Maybe not. It’s a theory, we’re
grabbing for anything.
And if we do tell these chatterboxes in only the nicest way to stop narrating their lives like a thousand page novel, would they ever talk to us again? Do we care?
I mean we do love them. Some of them.
It was a great exchange we had, my friend and I. He spoke and I spoke then we built on what each other said and were reminded that dialogue, not monologue, feels good to everyone not just to one big talker.
And we agreed to try harder to say our piece and yet keep the peace. Such diplomats.
Or maybe we decided it’s them or us and we’re not going to take it anymore. Either way, we each said a mouthful fair and square — got things out — and went home to think about it, perchance to dream. Our teeth stayed in. TX Tagline:Donna Debs is a longtime freelance writer, a former KYW radio news reporter, and a certified Iyengar yoga teacher. She lives in Tredyffrin. She’d love to hear from you at ddebs@comcast.net.