REALIZING YOU MIGHT TALK TOO MUCH

Reworked from 2011.

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.  

Thus, I only have two blood cousins. Jean, on my mother's side, whom I have seen maybe 8 times in my life and Gale on my father's side that I have only seen twice.  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.

Below is a picture of Jean and myself 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 high forehead,  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 creatures. 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 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. 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. She was shocked that the line had been dead on my end for 10 minutes.

Seems she had continued talking almost the whole ten minutes.  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.  


Do you have a talker like that in your life, or is it maybe you? You can tell me. I'll listen:)

Every time we talked after that day in 2011, we would laugh long and hard about the infamous 10 minutes. 
 Sadly I lost my dear, chatty cousin in 2017.  I  miss her letters, long talks and giggles but also that last link to my Mom's side of the family.