REALIZING YOU MIGHT TALK TOO MUCH

The other day I was pleasantly surprised by a phone call from my cousin Jean who lives in  Staten Island, NY.   Now I don't have a large blood relative pool. Each of my parents had one sibling who in turn had only one child. Obviously we weren't  known for our  breeding skills.

Thus, I only have two cousins. Jean whom I have seen maybe 8 times in my life and Gale on my father's side that I have only seen twice.   I have to admit, that is pretty pitiful. We have just never lived anywhere close to one another.

Now Jean and I exchange the annual Christmas news letters and that about covered our communication till the next year. Jean is 12 years older than I and has been widowed for some time.   

For some unknown reason, neither of us sent the annual letters this past Christmas. I kept thinking I would and it just never happened. Since Jean much prefers talking to writing , she decided to call to see if I were still on the planet or should be mourned. 

What a delight it was to hear from her and to get caught up with her family. Jean is just a lovely person.  She was my role model when I was a kid and someone I wanted so much  to be like when I grew up.  She was pretty, funny, confident,  a nurse and had married a handsome, adoring man. One of those women who had it all.

For some unknown reason, since I was a child, she always insisted that I looked like Liz Taylor. The only thing LT and I had in common was dark, thick eyebrows.   In fact when I was younger, my brows almost formed  a uni-brow which I thought was so gross.  For some reason, my mom wouldn't let me pluck.

Below is a picture of Jean and yours truly in Key West during one of our 8 visits. I was in my late 20's and she was 40. Jean on the left and me on the right with big hair and a blissfully thin body. We definitely had the same cheek bone structure and short stature.

The next time we met, I was 40 and she was 52. She and her husband had come to stay with me for a few days in Florida when I had my animal shelter. Jean loves animals and she really enjoyed the group in my care.

I had a video camera then, one of those huge ones that rested on your shoulder  so I made a tape for them to take with them of their meeting of all the animals. As we watched the tape later, all Jean could say was, “Do I really talk that much?”

Her husband just grinned broadly and said nothing. Something I am sure he was use to doing. The tape was  a running commentary of Jean's voice. Now it is not that she was boring, she just talked non-stop and it was caught on tape. Pretty sure it was the first time she actually heard herself.  

I had forgotten about that trait that till the phone call. Jean would ask questions about me or my brother and almost before I could finish a few quick sentences, she would be relating a fun memory of the three of us. About an hour into the conversation, the phone line went “click, click” and died.

She had mentioned having phone troubles so I assumed it was on her end. I did not try to call her and waited for her to call back if it were possible on her end. After 10 minutes, I figured her service must be totally down and I prepared to go outside when the phone rang. It was Jean again.

Seems she had continued talking almost the whole ten minutes the line was dead.  She didn't even notice I wasn't there. That makes one feel "special".  She is one of those talkers with great breath control so often there is not even a pause so that one could grunt "uh huh."

I should say here that professional, breath control talkers don't really bother me for I all ready know all about myself and I like learning about others. Who knows when a story idea will come from such a conversation? Like now. 

We both laughed a lot over Jean's conversation with dead air.  She then suggested that during the rest of our talk, if I would periodically just say “beep, beep,” then she would know we were still connected. See, all she needed from me was a few "beeps".  My job was easy.  

We  no sooner hung up when the phone rang again. I fluffed up my ear and prepared my self for another session thinking Jean had forgotten something. We,  She talked a total of 2.5 hours, pretty sure 8 minutes of that time I actually had the floor. My ear felt glued flat to my head.  I probably should have gone to speaker function. 

However it was my brother checking to see if I had blown away in the recent tornadoes. He said he had been trying to call me but kept getting a busy signal all morning and was about to give up. He was convinced no one talks that long and that it had to be mechanical problems or storm damage.

Jim and I talked for about 30 minutes and my ear stuck to my head again. However this time it was a give an take conversation. Aahhh. Good thing also for I was beginning to think that maybe the reason I blog is just to finally have total control of a conversation.  Ya think?

Do you have a talker like that in your life, or is it maybe you?