He has a way of talking. He goes on and on and on. We all know this. It’s just the way he is, but still it sometimes catches us off guard, and we get trapped.
When we’re stuck in a room and he gets started, there’s no way to turn it off. No way to interject. No way to politely draw the conversation to a close.
It happened to me this afternoon. I called to ask him a question, and he was happy to oblige. It was about something he had worked on years ago, something he understood well. So he explained and explained, and the words kept coming and coming.
It was Friday afternoon, and I was in a good mood, so although I did hold the phone away from my head a few times to let the words pour onto the floor, I didn’t interrupt. And as he explained, I began to listen in a different way, to pay attention to the structure of his sentences and the specific words he used. And I began to understand the difficulty we have turning him off once he’s been turned on.
You see, when he talks, there really is only one sentence. It never ends. It just keeps flowing with no breaks, no pauses, no full-stops to provide an opening. Clause after independent clause of explanation just flows continuously, each linked together by coordinating conjunctions. As he was talking, I started to write them down.
Of course, there’s and and there’s but, but there’s also so and because and whereas, and there’s if, which shouldn’t qualify but does when enlisted into service by him, and finally there’s um and you know.
With this basic toolbox, his thoughts expand into the space around you, and you can’t get away unless you either speak up and stop him mid-sentence, which usually feels somehow rude, or you let it run its course. On this day, I let him run out of words, and eventually even he began to notice the silence on my end. It only took about 20 minutes.