Is Anybody Listening?

            I guess I revealed in my last blog that I talk to myself. Actually, it’s really just thinking out loud. Except that sometimes I do answer. After I say something stupid, which occurs more often than you might think, the first thing I do when I get alone is start in with, “I can’t believe you said that, what were you thinking?”…“I don’t know, it just slipped out.”…“I should have just left you at home...”Well why didn’t you?...”Next time I will.”

            I talk to my 9 pound Yorkie Poo quite a bit when there’s no one in the house. I say things like: “Let’s go make lunch, yo momma is starving!” I usually make it sound a little cutesy, because if someone’s listening, like a burglar hiding under the bed, I don’t want him to think I’m crazy. 

            If you work from home and spend a lot of the day alone, you’re going to talk to yourself. There’s a profound need to hear a human voice, even if it’s your own. That’s why solitary confinement is such a dreaded punishment, except for a couple of husbands I know, who probably fantasize about it.

            But when you get in the habit of talking to yourself, it starts happening around other people. If I’m golfing and hit a decent ball, by accident, I’ll cheer it all the way. “Go, baby, flly, fly, fly, fly, fly!” Realizing what I’ve done, I’ll make up some sheepish cover story, like: “I’m just trying to help it along on sound waves,” but nobody’s buying it. I can hear them thinking, “She’s a couple of clubs shy of a full set, but it was a nice shot.”

            I know I’m not the only one chattering away to myself because more than once I’ve been in a ladies bathroom and heard a woman come in, thinking she’s alone in there, and whisper to herself, “Who does she think she is with a comment like that? I ought to march right back out there…” or some such. You know that she knows she got caught because when you start rustling around, she gets very, very quiet, and she won’t come out of that stall until you’re gone.

            We all do it, I’m not ashamed of it, and as someone very wise once said, “You’re not crazy until the toilet starts talking back.”