Have you ever been at dinner with friends, or gone for coffee and found yourself feeling like you are in a hostage situation? One person has been holding the verbal floor for quite some time, everyone else is sitting holding their glasses, politely smiling and nodding at first. It’s alright, you tell yourself, they just have a particularly interesting story to tell, they will get to the point soon, and then, someone else will get a turn!
But, no! They story goes on and on. And on! How, you think, can they not notice that everyone’s eyes are starting to glaze over, and their smiles are starting to look like they’re set in stone? But they don’t. The ramble continues in excruciating, digressing detail, until you realise that you have forgotten just exactly what the point of the story, if ever there was one, is!
Guests are starting to lose the will to live. You look at your host: is he asleep, or just sitting with head bowed, screaming silently inside! Others are looking daggers at you, blaming you, because after all, was it not YOU in your polite, conversational ignorance, who posed the inviting question to this verbal hostage taker, who seems mind-blowingly blind to the cues and hints coming from his audience. The fixed stares, the throat-clearing, the chair-scraping: all go unnoticed! How is it possible, you ask yourself, they have not noticed the only voice audible in the last 20 minutes or so, has been their own?
Finally, mercifully, a surreptitious look at your watch tells you that it is not too early to take your leave, begging off with the excuse of an early work start tomorrow, you have to bonsai your cat: anything to escape this aural terrorist! Others, quick enough to leap into the opportunity with you, make their escape as well…leaving the poor host to endure the outcome of the story, that is, if it ever comes to a close!
They say that conversation is an art form, and that may be true. For me, I think that it is much simpler than that: it’s a bit like a team activity, it’s so much more enjoyable if you take the ball, run with it for a while, and then remember to HAND IT ON to the next team member. So much fairer and more interesting that way: and there should always be serious penalties for ‘holding on to the ball!’