CrossRoads Farm

She's got that gene

07 November, 2004 - 10:56 am

K can certainly spin a yarn. She has that gene that runs in my family were there is no such thing as making a long story short, rather we tend to make a short story longer than it need be.

On this last trip home my mother was the winner of the Short Story Long Award. We had spent the whole afternoon at their house. We had dinner with them and D had just mentioned that we were going to have to get going if we were going to be at Uncle house at seven. Suddenly mom launches into one of her guess-what-happened-to-me-at-school narratives. She generally saves these stories for me while we are out driving to the mall or some such so they don’t really bother me. It took a good ten minutes to tell a story that should have taken about a minute and a half.

Don’t misunderstand. I used to be one of these people. I can make a short story longer than War and Peace. But D has slowly and sometimes not so delicately trained this gene right out of me. Thank goodness. Now I can tell when I’m rambling. I recognize than far away look in someone’s eyes for what it is. Abject boredom. They are not thinking deeply about what I am saying; they wish I’d shut the hell up already.

I desperately try not to get that look on my face when my folks ramble on. I know I wear my emotions right up front. If I don’t like you or think you are full of shit you can tell. Just read it off my face. I am no good at hiding it. When I’m at Gram and Gramps I have to go into the bathroom and shut the door just so I can let my face muscles relax from trying to hide that look. That one and the one that says: Did You Just Say That Out Loud??

So K got the gene. She can go on and on over something the cat just did or something that H just said. Even if it happened while I was standing right there. I understand where she is coming from. She wanted to share her perceptions of what is going on around her. I’m all for that. So I try to stay patient. I try to listen to everything she says. And I only occasionally resort to, “Honey, I know, I was right there when it happened.”

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