So, I’d like to know what you think about this experience I recently . . . experienced. Please don’t sugar coat it; just listen to me and then tell it to me straight.
After all these years, it had finally come down to this. Nothing more, nothing less. I said to him, as gently as I could, “I need to talk to you about something I frankly find more than a little . . . embarrassing. No, really, I’m ashamed I have to raise it. But, finally, I’ve come to realize I have no choice. It’s long overdue.”
“Hey, man,” he said to me, “if it’s really troubling you that much, just lay it on me. Get it off your chest. I’m here for you. I can handle it. And I can be discreet too,” he added as an afterthought.
Okay, then, so here’s exactly how the conversation between the two of us unfolded. I’m not leaving anything out.
“You know how people sometimes talk to themselves,” I asked? “Sometimes even out loud? People often say this can be the first sign of madness,” I added.
“Is that all you’re . . . talking about?” he responded to me. “Talking to yourself, whether out loud or silently in your head, is a valuable tool for thought, managing your own actions through private speech much the same way as you might manage the actions of others through public speech. It can even be a device for regulating your emotions,” he added. “That’s hardly a sign of insanity.”
“Well, that’s may be true,” I replied, “if it’s one of your grandkids doing it, but an adult doing it? I don’t know about that.”
He paused. I think he was trying to find a way to let me down softly. “Does it not occur to you,” he said, “that your shyness relating to this subject may be caused specifically by the fact that you find yourself now, as an adult, continuing your old child-like habits, even if mostly internalized today?”
I thought about what he had just said to me. “Come to think of it,” I responded to him, “I guess I do see grown-up athletes often talking to themselves. Egging themselves on. Maybe it helps their creativity, and their resulting performance.”
He must have liked my thinking. “You bet,” he shot back at me without a moment’s hesitation. “I’m sure this comportment helps the creativity and performance of some of our greatest minds, not just athletes. I don’t think you have anything to worry about.”
“Me?” I asked. “I wasn’t talking about me. I was talking about you.”
“Me?” he retorted. “You’re kidding. I don’t talk to myself! Not since I was in pre-school.”
Just then, The Wife turned to him and said, “Did you say something to me, dear?”
“No,” he answered.
“Well,” she said, “Then who were you talking to? There’s no one here but you and me.”
“No one. I wasn’t talking to anyone.”
“Okay, if you say so.”
And with that . . . the conversations ended. All of them. He showed us.
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