Can’t You Say Something?!?
I was driving Shane to school – one of the few times I get to actually talk to him, since he hides out so often nowadays – and I started telling him a story.
I can’t remember what the story was about; it’s irrelevant. It was a story that I thought would be interesting to Shane. I started talking a minute or two after we left the house.
I continued talking as we turned onto the main street, and as we drove through the first light. I talked all the way through the three-minute stoplight break. I talked for another few blocks, when we turned into a residential neighborhood, and then I talked for another five minutes as we drove through the neighborhood.
Shane never spoke. He never said, “oh wow” or “that’s interesting” or “I wish you would shut up.” He never said, “why did that happen?” or “something like that happened to me once” or “don’t you hate it when that happens?” He didn’t utter a single word.
Since ten minutes had passed, and I had been waiting for him to chime in on the conversation, I just blew up.
“Can’t you say something?!?” I screeched. “I have been talking the entire way to school and you are just sitting there! You seem to be listening but you haven’t said anything that makes me think this is a conversation! I feel like I’m talking to a brick! Don’t you have one single word to say?”
“Not really,” he said.
“But don’t you think you should say something, since I have been talking non-stop for ten minutes? Like maybe so I would know you are listening? Like maybe something that would show some interest in the conversation that I thought we were having?”
“I didn’t want to interrupt,” he said. Shane seemed a little hurt, as if I’d smacked him in the face for sitting still.
I know there’s a difference between females and males, and that males tend to think first, then talk. I know that females tend to talk while they think. I saw it on the Discovery Channel video I bought. But this is beyond that.
And I also know that I shouldn’t blather on for ten minutes and then explode with no warning. I had to apologize for that.
But still… I felt like Shane should have said something. Anything. Something that would imply that he heard me, that he was there.
Shane has never quite gotten the art of conversation. On the telephone, he’ll say, “Okay bye,” and hang up after he gets whatever information he needs. And in person, he’s much the same way. It makes me wonder if he ever speaks when not spoken to.
So now I am on a quest: discover how to help Shane converse.
And also: stop yelling at him for saying nothing.