If your tales tend toward the long and boring, listen up
When I sit across the table from someone who recounts a vignette or tells a family story beginning with the words, “Long story short …,” I feel an overwhelming desire to take a butter knife to my most accessible vein.
Among the crimes against humanity not subject to ordinary prosecution is the telling of endless, detailed, meaningless stories. The other cue that a three-nap saga is about to unfold is the lead-in words, “ This is really funny …”
I know you know what I’m talking about. Imagine this scenario: You’re sitting at dinner and one of the diners says, “I spoke to my cousin in Cleveland yesterday, and he told me the saddest story about his neighbor who was trying to sell his car and met a prospective buyer who just lost his job and decided to open a taco stand, but couldn’t get insurance, so he asked his mother for help but she just had gallbladder surgery …” You get my point.
In polite society you simply cannot and would not insult your dining companions.
What you really want to do is excuse yourself, call a taxi and head home. No can do.
Instead, you try the remedies available to civilized human beings. You wait for an opportunity to interrupt and change the subject. You ask the waiter for a) the menu b) the Heimlich maneuver or c) the check. Or you might say, “Yes, yes, that’s so interesting. You mentioned this the last time we had dinner.” Or you could avert your gaze, break eye contact and give the nonverbal cue that you’ve left the building.
I’m sure I’m standing in a glass house on this issue. I’m sure I’ve been guilty of telling stories that bore my friends, but I really, really try not to. I like to recount a quick vignette that has a point to make or a laugh to extract or a sympathetic nod to evoke. I will often ask my friends, “Did I tell you this before?” and I truly appreciate it if they say I have. My own friends, of course, are never guilty of being anything but scintillating over lunch or dinner.
