Are you sure you are not a bore?

By Lionel Wijesiri

“A bore is someone who deprives you of solitude without providing you with company.”
- Oscar Wilde

I was coming out from a premier shopping mall last Saturday when an old school mate rushed towards me. I had not met him after I left school. Looking at the approaching figure, I notice that he had become a strong man and looked not so much like a professor as a wood-chopper, with thick forearms and hairy hands that were half-clenched. He displayed an enviable vitality; I had a feeling that he might live 120 years.

“How are you?” I asked as a matter of courtesy. And he told me - for 12 minutes running. He informed me in detail about his children’s doings, his last vacation, his ever-improving golf game, and his multiple consultancy engagements for the upcoming months.

He spoke quickly and with a sense of dignity, as if he was being interviewed by a television reporter. He took answering my question about his well-being as a slightly gruelling responsibility, but one that, he was compelled to fulfil in a comprehensive way. When he finished his long essay, he grunted, turned his back, and pounded off down the corridor. “Nice talking to you,” I said. But my dart was blunt, or at least not sharp enough to pierce what’s got to be a rhino-thick skin. He faced me once more. “You’re welcome,” he said. He turned again and was on his way.

Pulling off my car from the parking lot, I thought I should have defended myself a little better. Rather than letting him go on and on, I should have butted in and said my piece. I should somehow have turned his lecture into a conversation, made the solo a duet, or at least, when he was through, would have done a better job letting him know how I felt. Of course I didn’t because it was a hurtful and embarrassing thing to say to someone.

My school mate was a bore. He belongs to the sort of people who always have to hold the floor. They talk constantly at you, hurling their words like spears, each one tiny enough but nearly deadly in their collective effect.

Almost all bores seem to have been born with, or to have developed, an amazing capacity: they can talk and take in air at the same time, so there’s never a moment to drop in your own two cents. On they go. They take no interest in you or anything about you; at best, you’re a stage prop in the one-person drama that they compose, produce, and star in.

These are the people who like to proclaim that they are about to make a long story short, when what they usually do is make no story at all interminable. They’re the people who clear their throats, look you in the eye, and, with great finality, say, “My point is . . . ,” then proceed to ramble on with no point whatever in sight.

They’re the people whose idea of human interaction seems to be turning up the volume on the monologue that’s always going on in their heads. Nothing stands in its way. What is the bore trying to tell you? Is it “You are nothing and I am all”?

Another acquaintance of mine, when asked how he is, inevitably replies with an interminable list of the places he’s visited recently and then of where he’ll be going next - the more exotic the place, the longer his dilation. As he talks, I feel myself shrink further and further toward oblivion.

The boredom that you experience when you are forced to listen to a boring conversation can be quite harrowing. But you must at all costs disguise, or dispense with, the physical manifestations of boredom - yawning, watering eyes, a fixed and glazed look, frequent glances at your watch, a tendency to cast your eyes around the room looking for an escape route.

Variety

There is a variety of bores. One of the worst examples, to my mind, is the narrator. He starts his story with the grandmother, explores every branch of the family tree and ends up with remote descendants. This listeners are forced to sit around in a state of polite, helpless petrifaction. My school mate who met me at WTC belongs to this type.

There is also jokester bore. You have only to lay eyes on him to see “have you heard this one” rising to the surface. Then there is the hypochondriac bore who draws up symptoms from the bottomless well and in never happier than when giving second-by-second account of his last tooth extraction. And also there exists snob bore who manages to inject famous names into every other sentence. He may know the people he talks about, but it’s that old inferiority complex that makes him defend himself with abnormal importance.

I have come across in my life all these bores and learnt a few tricks to get away from them. If you are trapped by a bore, and you have lost all hope of escape, embrace the situation and try to out-bore the bore, while indulging in an enjoyable venting of spleen.

With not a thought for politeness, wrench the conversational initiative away from him/her and start ranting about a subject close to your own heart. It’s releasing to get stuff off your chest and with any luck you’ll scare off the bore who’s unused to having the conversational baton stolen.

Which reminds me of that famous quip attributed to Winston Churchill. An ambassador said to him, “You know, Sir Winston, I’ve never told you about my grandchildren.” Whereat Sir Winston clapped him on the shoulder and replied, “I realise it, my dear fellow, and I can’t tell you how grateful I am!”

Good listeners

The familiar statement that good listeners make for good speakers is true. Of course, it is not good enough to be a good listener. If we all listened, we should live in universal silence. And, it is no kindness to encourage bores by too much patience. A gentle but firm hand can sometimes do the trick. I know of a wife who has a system of signals by which she warns her husband that he has sold the story before or has already talked long enough.

If you have suffered from listening to a bore yourself, you should be all too aware of the manifestations of boredom in others. Never risk being a bore by following six simple rules: listen carefully to what people have to say; react to their conversation; ask questions; only hold forth if invited to; keep your obsessions to yourself; never lecture or harangue.

Above all, be aware that a proper conversation needs the full participation of at least two people.