A Cat isn't a Mom

I had a thought the other day after a frustrating encounter with someone who talks A LOT. Then I had that thought reinforced with more frustrating encounters with people who talk too much.

A graph came to mind. Now, I am a visual thinker. When I study for tests, I take mental photos of the pages I am reading and store them in my brain. When I write a test, I pull out that image of the photo and look at the paper for the piece of info I am trying to remember.

That has nothing to do with anything. I just wanted to brag about how awesome my photographic mind is.

But a graph really did come to mind, and it goes likes this:

The less a person talks, the better skill they have at reading people's body language. The more a person talks, the greater that skill decreases. In general.

Now, there are some people who do understand body language, and are totally aware of how uncomfortable they make people, and thrive off that. I am not talking about those people.

I am talking about that person who never shuts up and they violate your ears by going on about nothing, and things you really don't care about. People who have verbal diaharrea really bad, and as soon as your eyes meet theirs for even a second, they puke words all over you.

Ya, those people.

And I thought about the correlation because those people, or at least the ones I have encountered in my life, seem to have absolutely no comprehension of body language. When no one is looking at them, they continue to talk. When you look bored, they continue to talk. My personal favourite is when you say nothing, or your only reply is "uh huh", and they still continue to talk, believing they are having an awesome long conversation with you, but have never noticed that they are the only ones talking, so it's not a conversation.

I have been trying for years to learn how to deal with these people, but it's difficult because they are so ignorant of how other people perceive them, and often they don't even care how people around them feel (I also know people who don't talk a lot, have minimal understanding of body language, and don't care how the people around them feel) because many of these people have no comprehension that their behaviour causes people to feel anything. They are dillusional.

So I've been trying to be patient, knowing that these people don't do this on purpose. They are not purposely being idiots, constantly spewing crap and stupid statements all over your brand new sweater. They don't know any better. They probably have stupid parents who shaped them that way.

For example:
Very recently, I told someone I know that my mom has cancer, and rather than offer any sort of sympathy, they equated my mom having cancer with their cat having cancer: "Oh...I just found out my cat has cancer". To throw them a social cue at how insanely insensitive of a statement that was (and that's me using nice language), I said: "Yeah well, a cat isn't a mom". The guy behind me laughed, because he saw what I was doing. So I thought, "good, point made". Nope. They stare blankly at me, almost insulted, and said "I've had my cat for 17 years. We're very close".

I didn't say anything more. What would be the point? I decided to turn around, and stop talking to them.

So you see, dear friends, sometimes the best way to deal with these people is to avoid them at all possible costs. It may not sound very Christian, but avoiding them is more Christian than the thoughts that run through my head when I am around them.

Save yourself the stress.

Now go donate a cancer infested cat to cancer research.