Too Many Words...

No that isn't a clever anachronism for having writer's block, I honestly have a touch of laryngitis. Now me, I like to talk. I'll give you a moment for your shock to subside. Okay let us continue. I'm fairly certain that I'm one of those people that basically thinks out loud in conversations with others. I talk to myself a lot too. I feared for a while that such a habit defined me as a little crazy, but I was able to console myself that that wasn't true. So when I am deprived of that ability its always a little odd. Now of course being in a country where no one much understands me anyway does soften the blow. I guess I could have more accurately phrased that as : "… in a country where I don't understand..." but that would conflict with my egocentricity.

I find that I am unable to resist the pull to converse unless I am completely isolated. My current vocal timber sounds like a tuba having relations with one of those harmonicas the Super Friends taught me to make out of wax paper and a comb. My old vocal and singing coaches (mystifies me to this day that I can actually refer to people in my past as such) would recommend all sorts of lemon tea and honey and yinchao to overcome this. Now I'm skeptical about many things but when it comes to home remedies from someone with no medical training I can get 'downright skeptical'. I tend to put my health in the hands of people that can fix bullet wounds, figuring that kind of over-qualification for sore throats is no less than I deserve.

That's not to say that I don't think that lemon tea would help soothe my throat, but after a malady years back where I drank lemon tea for six weeks straight I can't stomach the stuff anymore. Funny, it only took one night for peach schnapps to develop in me the same aversion but to be fair the quantities were somewhat similar. Oh and just so everyone knows its not Lemon Tea, its Lemon Peel Tea. You know, that part of the lemon you throw away? That's where they make that tea from. Some guy named Eddie picks it out of your compost heap and sells it to Lipton. Same with Orange tea: Orange Peel Tea. Strawberry tea? Strawberry Peel Tea.

Benefit to this ailment is that as long as I don't talk I feel fine. But then there is this backup of interesting things that I don't get to say to people. So when I finally do get my words back you can bet I'm going to pick up some conversations where they didn't leave off.

Now of course a lesson that I could pull out of this would be to just take this opportunity to learn how to listen, but even that I find tough. In my experience most people only like to talk at length if you can shoot them back an occasional tidbit to spur them on like feeding coins into an arcade game:

"I've always thought that myself, please go on" good for another 1-3 minutes

"I think those are probably the smartest words this room has heard" 10 additional minutes minimum

"That [insert stupid thing they just said here] is a lot like what the ancient Mayans (or Greeks or Tibetans or whatever) believed, how do you find that has affected your outlook on the world?" cancel any other engagements for the day

So I guess I'll have to fall back on the old smile and nod technique. Have a good weekend everyone.