Things have changed, if just a little bit, in ten years. From January 2005:
I’ve been hearing dialogue everywhere, dialogue that seems to be coming from the same play.
At the end of party I went to recently, a woman told me that I talk too much. I didn’t know how to respond, and left the party shortly afterwards, a bit confounded and mute, and afflicted with what the French call l’esprit d’escalier – “the wit of the staircase” – i.e., my mind began filling with all sorts of things I should or could have said.
So: a mind rewind.
Here we go: “Bob, you talk too much.”
- “True, true, true, true.”
- “Not ‘too much,’ just ‘much.’”
- “If you subtract the number of times I repeat myself, then you know that at least I don’t say too much.”
- “I can tell you why: You’re not going anywhere, are you?”
- “I just keep going until I find a word that makes you friendly.”
- “Does that mean you don’t think I’m interesting?”
- “What would you suggest I not have said?”
- Or, finally: “Oh throw me away and call it a day.”
[A friend wrote me later, charmingly: “You don’t talk too much. People talk too little.”]
repost from basil.ca
photo by Robert Basil
