YOU TALK TOO MUCH

YOU TALK TOO MUCH

Does anybody have a friend who talks too much? I believe we all do, at least one, but if you don´t have any you probably have no idea of how uncomfortable it is to relate to them. They´re the kind of people you never call on the phone - if you must talk to them, you simply delay your call, you never do it, because just answering their calls is already the greatest punishment you can bear.

A friend of mine is exactly the kind I´m talking about. When I answer the phone and I hear her voice asking me how I am, I feel like I took the wrong rocket to a faraway planet where I won´t have a ghost of a chance to be back before Christmas. After she asks me how I am, which I can answer in a few words,nothing else will I be able to say, except for some ohs, and ahs, and maybe hum-hum. And she talks about people I never saw or have any desire to see; she puts me uptodate with her family problems, all of them, it seems to me, and she also , out of politeness, favors me with some comments about my own family.

I do try to hang up, I know there´s always something we can do, something we can say, but ... who can say it? It usually takes me one hour to be able to say -"Sorry, I can´t talk at the moment." Different thoughts and feelings occur to me during these agonies. Sometimes I pity her - a person nobody wants to talk to; it must be terrible. Sometimes I hate her for being so harmful. Yes, harmful. And I also think of the people who "have" to talk with her - her son, her sisters and nieces ... I don´t know. Maybe they don´t. Maybe they have found a way to get rid of her.