Just a few words
But, I've come to realize that trying to ride out my Happy Thanksgiving entry through Valentine's Day may be depriving people of a real unintended public service.
Years ago, I worked in radio, and I loved to talk.
And talk.
And talk.
Not just to show off my cool radio voice – like the guy here at the local station who sounds like a never-ending 30-second promo even in casual one-on-one conversation – but because I had a lot to say.
Using my amazing oratorical skills and university level training in the art of communication, I would engage in extensive verbiage about any topic with anyone unfortunate enough, or polite enough, to listen.
Once, while working for a different company, I had to train an employee by sitting with him at his desk and explaining how to do some fairly mundane things on his computer.
A short time into our training session this guy - who inexplicably became a good friend of mine - started closing his eyes... and then his head started to droop... and then he actually started to snore and drool, right there at his desk, in front of a room full of people and with me still talking to him.
It really couldn't have been worse unless he would have fallen out of his chair, curled up in the fetal position and started sucking his thumb.
He later told me he was taking cold medicine and had been up late the night before and blah, blah, blah.
But I'm pretty sure I just knocked him out cold with my wordiness and incredible ability to bore. In fact, after that incident, others from the company would strike up conversations with me when they felt like taking a little nap.
If I whipped myself back into the great physical shape I was in when I wore a younger man's clothes, people joked, I could become a great prizefighter, dancing around the ring, trying to not get hit, while telling my poor opponent a pointless tale lacking any kind of substance or intrigue.
"MAKE HIM SHUT UP! MAKE HIM SHUT UP!" his corner would implore the referee, to no avail, as the unfortunate sap would eventually succumb to my overindulgence in the English language, falling to the canvas for a nice little session of R.E.M. sleep.
I would eventually be stopped by the simple use of earplugs, I argued, because of course, I felt compelled to actually engage in that conversation, just like every other conversation.
It's around that time, I decided to shut my trap and become a writer, but still to do this day, my own mother answers the phone by saying, "Hi hon, how are you? I don't have a long time to talk." Unless she needs me to fix something, in which case, she indulges me a little longer.
My wife seems to preface every question she asks me with the words "real" and "quick."
"Real quick, did you pick up the groceries I asked you to get?" she asks, I guess because she just wants to know if I picked them up but doesn't want to hear the novella about my experience at the store.
So what a great career move into the print media for me.
When I came to this company, Dave Mast told me that people here make fun of him all the time because the things he writes are so long.
Well good, I thought, but recently Dave told me, "You know, nobody seems to make fun of my story lengths anymore since you've been around."
Now either he's implying that people here think I have his back and they don't want to risk poking fun at him with such an imposing figure like myself ready to step in on his behalf, or he's saying I'm wordy.
I still have the ability to bore when speaking out loud, I know.
The most interaction I have with my boss here is when she pokes her head, ever so slightly, into my doorway, says "Hi Bill," and scurries away before I can engage her in conversation and waste a good portion of her day.
She learned quick, or as quickly as possible, considering it probably took several very lengthy conversations with me before she knew to stay away.
While conducting a "short" interview with a West Holmes volleyball player this past season – I will spare her from embarrassment by identifying her only as Ashley Miller – the girl I was speaking with stopped talking mid-sentence, closed her eyes and dropped her head for a good 10-to-15 seconds.
When she finally looked back up she said, "I'm sorry, I'm just really nervous," but I'm pretty sure she was just having a hard time staying awake while listening to me babble on about volleyball and the things I wanted her to tell me about volleyball.
So I started e-mailing and texting and instant messaging more in order to protect the populace from the sheer boredom I still seem to create with the spoken word.
The first time I instant messaged my editor, she said, "Really, Bill? Our offices are like 15 feet away from each other."
She really did speak those exact words out loud, and I heard them because our offices really are like 15 feet away from each other.
I still instant message her when I have something to say, although there is nothing really instant about reading the paragraphs I send to anyone via messaging avenues.
Prior to the start of this basketball season I wrote a story about West Holmes' sisters Lindsy and Laina Snyder, which, when finished, we considered publishing as an ongoing series, but chose instead to fill an entire sports section, with only one photograph.
After working on that story I have had several follow-up conversations with Lindsy and Laina's mother – who, to save from embarrassment, I will only identify as Shane Snyder.
Text message was the way to go I thought, to spare this poor woman from a repeat of the 90-minutes-plus she spent talking with me for my story.
Several times in the middle of those text conversations, Mrs. Snyder would – without warning or explanation – simply drop out and disappear for hours and sometimes days, only to resurface by texting me things like, "Sorry, I left my phone in the car for the entire day." Or, "My phone has been in my purse for a long time and I forgot it was there." Or (my favorite), "I was upstairs putting my daughters to bed."
What I eventually figured out – since teenage young women aren't usually still "put to bed" by their mothers, is that I was actually inducing sleep via text messaging, underwhelming people into unconsciousness with a few taps of my fingers on the keys of my Blackberry.
That explains various texts I have received from people recently, such as:
"Hey Bill, that was really funny wha"
"Got your text and"
Or even "Hmmmm, uhhhh"
The pen is mightier than the sword someone once said, and in my hands a keyboard of any kind is simply lethal.
So if people are reading my blogs and getting some good winks of sleep, so be it!
If you've fallen asleep reading this blog, I don't blame you, I've fallen asleep while writing it too.
Once you wake up, wipe the drool off of your desk, go out and pick yourself up a copy of the Holmes County Journal or Holmes Bargain Hunter, turn to the sports pages and get back to sleep.
And if I don't get around to blogging again for a while, Happy Valentine's Day!