Speak free

People who don’t let you get a word in

We’ve all met those people who love to hear the sound of their own voice, and who especially love to hear the sound of their own opinions. I’ve met more than a few of these people in my life, and while I have no problems at all with someone sharing their viewpoint, or giving a little speech on occasion (much like I’m doing here, ahem), there are some pesky people who just don’t seem to have any sort of speech self-control at all. Oh, to have a universal remote control with a very large stop button for when I found myself in these situations.

The worst thing I find about these people, I think, is that it’s rather like trying to stop a very determined freight train using mind control alone. Basically, they don’t even notice that you’d like to add in a little something of your own, or that you’re desperately bored and would like to go home now, please. No, these are the sorts of people who will speak non-stop for five minutes, and who will pause only to take a very large breath before they start up again. And, meanwhile, the poor members of the audience (or worse, some poor put-upon person on the train, or in a store), are desperately nodding their heads and contributing small tokens of “Yes, but–”, and “Well, I–” and “But have you–”, all to no avail.
Perhaps these ultra-talkative people need to be given some sort of timer that only lets them talk for a certain set amount of time before they have to open up the floor for someone else. Perhaps they need to work out some sort of system where they need to put there hand up before they can speak, and where everyone is allowed to have a turn. Who knows, they might learn to talk to people rather than at them!

Pay attention to this update: I have further news about the riding holiday, it has surfaced that there is something about horse liability that we need to look into. I know nothing about this, so Lin if you could do this it would be great.