Now I understand that everyone wants to talk about themselves on occasion. This is normal. Humans, as a species, are a bit egotistical at times. But then there are those who go on, and on, and on, and on, AND ON about themselves to the point where you can actually stop listening and they aren't daunted. They plug away and somehow manage to convince themselves that they have a rapt audience.
The Hubs and I like to refer to these social giants as "One-Uppers". You know the type. For every tale you tell they can go one bigger. For example someone recently asked how we were doing with having a newborn in the house. Upon hearing the answer, "oh, you know, good but tired" he fired back with "oh, you don't know tired until..." and then proceeded to list the many things in his life that would make him more qualified for the title tired than we are.
Pardon us for our mistake.
Don't you just want to kick them in the shin? Of course, after you did they'd probably tell you how they've been kicked MUCH harder than that before, and even your sad little attempt at punishing them would be invalid in their eyes.
There are definitely situations where it's considered appropriate to talk about yourself to the exclusion of others. An example of this would be a job interview. Yep. I got nothing else.
All other social situations would dictate that you shut your yapper for at least a full minute, whether you're actually listening or not, and allow the other party to talk. If nothing else these Me Monsters could use it as a chance to build up steam and take a deep breath before plunging headlong into their next diatribe.
To these Me Monster, One-Uppers, I say....
Get a blog.
It's worked for me :)
2 comments:
I AGREE... Austin and I call them "one-uppers" as well and have one in the family. The worst is exactly what you said, when they ask YOU something and then one up YOU. Please, don't ask me if you really don't care to hear my answer!! I feel one uppers ask you specific questions because they are already planning to one up you, that's why they asked you that questions. I'm with you on this one... SUPER ANNOYING!!
Aspen I have had that some complaint and when I wrote about it I did a much better job. I also had more info to put in my example of this problem. Come on you should have asked my opinion on this subject because I would have come up with so many better things. I mean really!
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