When Conversation Goes Wrong

Ever been in a conversation where the conversation goes wrong? I have, and often. There is a certain someone I know who talks way too much- and not in a good way.

I’ve been party to three, four hour long talks, with good friends; good thought provoking talks where the topics flowed from one idea to the next and sometime later end up back again at the beginning.

This isn’t one of those times.

No. This person would be a clip on a reality TV show entitled “When Conversations Go Wrong” and it would showcase people caught in the act of committing conversation murder– figuratively killing the other person with bad communication skills. Spoiler Alert – this person is my brother.

This episode would go as follows:

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A smartly dressed man enters room, proceeds to engage the person present in conversation by asking how their day went. After pretending to listen to what was said, their reply the equivalent of “that’s nice”, at which point they begin their hour long monologue about their day– to include the details of every meal, their work, and any other thoughts or ideas that they had that happen to be of no relatable relevance to the audience. Basically the most boring lecture ever!

Unfortunately, the usual social cues to signal polite disinterest do not register: lack of eye contact, no responses aside from grunts or monosyllabic words. Nothing triggers. I will engage fully in another activity such as flipping through a magazine, surfing channels, watching TV, texting, reading articles on the internet– ANYTHING– in the hopes that he will get a clue that he has LOST me, and he should stop talking.

I have resorted outright rude behavior. I have LEFT the room while he is talking and even that doesn’t register. I can still hear him talking from the other room. Not being physically present stops him.

I have tried running out his verbal clock by telling him to continue talking and “I can still hear you” and may even have started talking to another person in another room, had that side conversation, and then returned.

Would it help if I made a sign I could flip up like you see in the movies used at auctions, except instead of having a number, my sign would have to say something effective like– “get to the point” or “conversation foul” or “you’re losing me”? Something like that?

Perhaps I could use the Wrap It Up machine from Dave Chappelle, if it was a real thing.

It’s not that I can’t follow along with what he says, but he’ll make his point then reiterate twelve different ways, not saying anything new, just expressing the same idea again and again using different words or examples. I get it already! Enough!

I’ll admit, I can be guilty of beating a dead horse into the ground, I could complain ad nauseam about mr horrible until I’m blue in the face. However, there is not one person on this planet whose time I would waste by doing so without offering to pay them. Unless they offered to do so for free.

My brother? He doesn’t seem to care that he is being rude by talking during TV shows. He’s actually asked that the show be paused so he can finish saying his piece. Time and place, man! This isn’t it!!

Today I made a tactical error today of directing a comment about something I read his way and it unfortunately reminded him of some idea he had, completely unrelated, that he couldn’t wait to talk my ears off about despite the fact that until that moment I had been actively engaged in reading. Fuck my life.

It’s not enough to just mention an idea, shoot around a few concepts and then leave it at that…. no. It has to go full fledged into production and algorithms and the specifics of making the business model happen, the act of telling me about his idea becomes long winded monologue where I sit bored because the idea has long ceased to be an interesting topic for me and now I am just waiting for an opportunity to steer the conversation to a new topic, or to cease it altogether. Preferably the latter. After about thirty minutes, and no end in sight, I say “OK” and turn on a TV, since the silent act of my reading is not enough to get him to stop talking.

I am comfortable with silence. I am not one of those people who feel the need to fill the quietude when in the presence of other people with noise, unless my point is to make noise on purpose to elicit a reaction. Frankly, I don’t assume everyone has something worthwhile to share with me and vice versa. Sometimes, after being in a dead end toxic relationship you become attuned to know when it’s worth the effort of sharing information in conversation, and when its just better not engaging in any form of verbal exchange. It seems, at least, I did.

He doesn’t pass my Mia Wallace test. Remember that scene in the movie Pulp Fiction where Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega are sitting in the diner car and she brings up the “uncomfortable silence”? No? Watch this clip to freshen your memory:

So the person I know, that can’t seem to quit yakking about bullshit and just enjoy the silence (a la Depeche Mode), who fails my Mia Wallace test miserably happens to be my brother. It doesn’t help that he has admitted with needing to fill gaps in conversation with words, that he feels awkward not saying something. So basically, his strategy has morphed into not being able to actually have a conversation like a normal person.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s insufferable conceit, his personal belief that what he has to say is paramount and should command all the attention? Or it a general obtuseness, blithe ignorance about how his actions/words are received by others?

I used to say he’d make an excellent professor, he certainly thinks he is the smartest person alive, his opinion is infallible and he can talk for hours not seeming to care or notice that nobody is actively listening.

I wish I could figure out how to help him not be a sociopathic conversation killer, because I’m sure he’s one or two syllables away from being convicted for his verbal crimes.

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Join us next time on another harrowing episode of “When Conversations Go Wrong…”.