The Mister and I were driving home after breakfast and conversation shifted to a mutual friend. This friend habitually dominates conversations by attempting to regale listeners with numerous anecdotes from his glory days. Glory Days being the decades between his twenties and forties when he was intellectually superior to his peers, and demonstrated it with acts of machismo. I suppose the retelling of the stories in excess of six times is an effort to recapture some of the fleetingness of youth, or perhaps he’s just getting older and doesn’t recall the repetition. Regardless, these stories have a way of disrupting conversation. Instead of an activity of joint participation, the the interaction is reduced to monologue and prisoner.

I confessed I seldom paid attention to the stories, and consequently to little else this guy said, because the experiences lacked reciprocity and overindulged repetition.

The topic shifted to daily interactions, and how many people in our daily lives discuss topics we have no interest in, and yet we listen politely, though maybe with indifference, and how many of those same people can’t be bothered to listen to the mundane details of our own lives when put in a position to return the favor. Consequently, I have little to say, because so much of my life is uninteresting and quite ordinary.

The Mister remarked that both of us frequently had little to say, and noted that I talked slightly more than him, which was interesting because I thought that he talked slightly more than me. We assessed one another with deer in the headlights looks, because both of us were surprised the other thought the opposite.

We are frequently surprised by the way others view us. At times we are surprised at their misinterpretation, in other instances, we are completely shocked when they see us clearer than we see ourselves.

Incidentally, both of us have said very little since we arrived home. I guess neither of us wants to be the one who talks more.