I have an acquaintance whom I would like to punch in the face.
Not really, of course, because I don't want to go to jail for battery or assault or for whatever they would charge me, even if it was a long time coming and the only rational response to the monologue.
And not because I want to cause them pain, because I don't want to, nor cause myself pain, which would be another inevitable outcome since, let's face it, I've hit myself with my drumsticks and it hurts. I could never imagine inflicting that sort of pain on another human being and I don't know how anyone brings herself to take up boxing.
With all that said, however, these days no one seems to stop and think.. I have had many a conversation with different people who have all breathlessly jumped on what I was saying, sometimes in the middle of my saying it, not because they had a response to the content of my dialogue, but because they simply could not wait to blurt out whatever they had been thinking of the entire time I was speaking. Everyone seems to have an opinion, but no one seems to have any thought behind it and even more rarely any facts at the very base of it. People just seem to be regurgitating the same things they always said in every conversation before this one without any regard for the topic or the twists and turns of the dialogue at hand. It is extraordinary the number of "intelligent" and "educated" people out there who have never been taught to listen.
Nor yet have they been taught to ask questions.
I feel like I am holding down the question boat all by myself. A neighbor told me she loved a
movie, a quasi-documentary (or maybe a full-on documentary, I never found out), she had seen and when I asked her why, she was a bit floored. This is a highly intelligent individual with a retentive memory who constantly makes herself the center of the conversation circuit (for better or worse), but synthesizing her data was an arduous task. I am a very patient person; I asked some leading questions and she got some facts together, but her concluding statement was still, "I just really liked it, you know?" and that's why it was a life-changing film. She did not ask me any questions about anything, not about similar movies, not about my opinion, absolutely nothing. You can imagine the conversations we have in general.
There are times and places for speechlessness: sunsets, beaches, coral reef diving, and maybe Stonehenge during the Summer Solstice, but if you are going to tell me that something truly changed your life, I hope you have a way to express it to me. Because if it was so important that your entire outlook and behavior were modified, don't you think it would be a good thing to share with someone else? And if you're not asking yourself what changed in your behavior, maybe, just maybe nothing really changed. Maybe you're employing hyperbole. In which case, stop it right now and learn how to speak like an adult. Everything is not "super-cool and awesome." You are cheapening your experience, my time, and the English language.
These days, my "conversations" with other English speakers would really be more aptly described as "individual rants". These days, the only people who know how to give, take, and consider are my adult English conversation students and that is because they are working with a second language, so they HAVE to stop and think about what is being said. What a round-about way to have a fulfilling exchange of ideas. I don't like empty argument or endless debate over things that don't matter and cannot be influenced by the conversing parties (if you can't vote in my country, do not tell me who I should vote for; and politics in your country are boring because people in your country seem to be pretty boring, I am sorry to tell you).
Or you could save yourself one thousand words and just use a picture. A picture of someone getting punched in the face.
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