Posted: Mon Mar 24, 2008 9:49 am
Certainly, but it's all a matter who says what to whom, and for how long, IMO.Well, what else do we have to go on but our personal lives; and our own individual pasts?
For example, I enjoy an occasional chat my my neighbours when I walk my dogs, but the fact that I'm nice and polite doesn't mean that I enjoy the constant re-telling of some of those neighbours' life stories, or in the case of that man, his past girl friends.
I have a problem with people who only function on "monologue" mode, I avoid them if I can. Other people just try to wrestle an opportunity to talk, but with the constant monologuers in my opinion it's no use: they just stop talking for a few minutes, and just wait for an opportunity to go back to where your interruption stopped them.
Also, as the monologuers encounter a lot of people who, like me, try to run away from their boring monologues, they have developed very good techniques to make sure you stay there and listen, and a very good sense of who will be a nice victim-listener (naturally, they themselves run away from other monologuers, as they don't want to listen.)
A typical case was a colleague of mine many years ago (otherwise a good soul) who had told her stories so many times that she had resorted to actually grabbing your arm in the teacher's room to prevent you from leaving!
I sometimes wonder if I am a magnet for such people, and I certainly have had opportunity to study them and.. could write a small book about them!