Sshhhh!
I did speak, but just to a small team of lucky listeners. Pretty much my parents and grandparents were the chosen few, give or take and uncle or two. I never spoke to anyone I didn’t know well.
Just about every school report card I got from school had the words “quiet” and “conscientious” peppered throughout them. Anyone in the teaching profession will be able to tell you that these are codewords for “I haven’t a clue who I’m reporting on as clearly they have made no impression on me whatsoever”.
Everything changed around the age of about twelve when I decided that chatting might be a laugh, and shyness could, in the words of the Morrissey, stop me doing all the things in life I’d like to. But the turning point is not what I want to focus on. I’ll do that another time.
Despite my turn to the chattier side of life, I still like quiet and there are periods of time where I like to be quiet and not engage in conversation. Indy, my son is the same, and I’ll happily share my quiet time with him. Not chatting.
I do, however, have two key players in the Flying Martinis that don’t like to be quiet at all, ever. One is Meeester. That’s fine-my choice- opposites attract and all that and I often send him off to chat to people when I can’t be bothered. The other is my actual genetic offshoot, Junior Misssy.
Despite the moniker, she is no more like me than flying air. The girl wakes up chatting, she goes through the whole day chatting, she chats while she eats, she chats in the bath, she chats in the car, she chats on the toilet, she chats when no-one else is there, she chats to the cats, she chats to ladies she meets in the shop, she chats to the snails in the garden, she chats to foreign people who don’t understand her, she chats from January 1st to December 31st with no break except for sleep. And I’ve even heard her chat when she’s doing that.
On holiday she spent a lot of time in her seat on the back of my bike and it was like having an in-bike entertainment system stuck on Talk Radio.
She fell asleep beside me in bed about 30 minutes ago. Up until that point she chatted all through Big Brother (she reckons they should get “kicked out if they say a bad word” Good call, I say) and given that she seemed full of topics of conversation, she was threatening to chat all the way through “My Name is Earl” which is the Favourite Television Show of the Flying Martinis.
I had to gently tell her to stop.
This is a child psychology dilemma. Your chatty kid is driving you daft but you don’t want them to feel that you are not interested in answering any more questions in this particular day. Last question of the day was “Mu-um? Does Harley have kittens in his tummy?” (Harley is our fifteen year old male eunuch cat.) Now, this question is a good one and on it’s own is quite cute. Darling, even.
But I tell you, it must be question number 3,003 today.
And about 1,000 of those questions have been the one that every parent would like to see banned:
“Mu-um, are we there yet?”
Ever since our mammoth journey to Holland, this has been a favourite. But to be asking it when we are going to the supermarket is a bit much.
Because I’m still a quiet wee girl deep down.
Shhhhhh!
