Verbosity

Before I started teaching, I spoke to a friend who had just taken on her first classes and she told me that she was amazed how much she could talk when she had to. I have thought of this many times in my own classes and it really is amazing! But I generally pride myself on being both thorough and concise, both in my career and in my personal life. I’m not one to babble on and on, and I’m generally pretty good at reading my audience. But lately, something has changed.

In the past few weeks, I have found myself at a loss for the exact words I wanted, especially when ordering food. I’m not sure why, but it has been painfully obvious. It started when I walked into our local Q-doba and spent a good minute trying to explain that I wanted a “naked bowl” with black beans and steak, something that should have taken about 5 seconds. I blamed this on the newness of the business (at least locally) and their recent addition of a true label for the product I desired. But then it happened again. At Togos, I got confused in the moment of the order and asked for the wrong thing. And lest you think the streak was over, it happened again. This time, we were out at a local steakhouse for my mother-in-law’s birthday. It’s a great place that serves up monstrous baked potatoes with your choice of any or all of their toppings: butter, sour cream, chives and bacon. I wanted to say, “no butter, but extra sour cream and bacon.” But again I ended up mixing words, confusing the poor waitress and becoming the brunt of jokes for the rest of the meal (and afterwards, from my loving husband). And when I finally thought I had it all figured out, it happened yet again. This time, my husband and I were at The Habit with a friend. This botched order was so bad I don’t even remember what I said. Luckily, all of our servers have been excellent… and patient… and I’ve ended up with exactly what I wanted in the first place.

But don’t think this story is over. As we sat down to eat our meals at The Habit, my husband brought up my verbal stumblings. Now, I can be a little excitable and that’s when the Italian in me comes out - I use my hands and really get into my story. That’s what good storytellers do, right? So I began to share an overview of my food-related follies to our friend. We were all laughing, my husband was adding to my story and our friend was asking questions. It was at this moment that I realized the patio where we were seated was a little quieter than before, so I looked around. There was a table of guys sitting to my left and they had all turned around with their eyes fixed on our table. We made eye contact, I chuckled a little and we all went back to our respective conversations. I’ll never know if it was my storytelling, our laughter or my lively hand gestures, but we had clearly attracted more attention that I had intended. Hopefully, they were simply enjoying a laugh with me, albeit at my expense, but that’s the risk you take when you open your yap about your inability to close it.