HOLDING RUDENESS BACK

Basically, at this age, I am an impatient person.  People who think and talk slowly, taking too long to get to the point and or with their editorializing, make me fight to keep from being rude. I feel as some of my friends do (though they don't seem to want to talk about it) that I have a relatively limited time left in my life and it angers me to waste it being bored by people.

We older people seem to find others our age who want to talk about the same things over and over, even when told they have mentioned this before.  It is as though the record has to be played to the end.  If they really want to repeat a story they know is boring me by my spaciness, yawning, and glazed eyeballs, I have the urge to tell them they should talk to a mirror.  Sometimes I forget to whom I have said something and tell my friends to stop me if I am repeating.  I don't want them to be polite when I repeat myself.  In a car as a passenger it is often difficult to see a face to gauge reaction..

Others keep repeating because there is nothing  new in their heads about which to talk.One person rarely phones me because, I'm told, she has nothing to say.  She seemed baffled when I suggested she might just want to call to see how I am!  Generally I listen to such people thinking about all the days of my life I have wasted listening to people who talk to hear themselves, rather than caring whether I am listening, want to hear or not.  While I think it was an amusing comeback, I don't want to respond as the son of a cousin of mine when he said to his father, "Dad, you must mistake me for someone who gives a damn!"  While I don't say that, I think it often.

I tend to chatter at times and am sure I have bored friends and certainly wish they would tell me, especially when we are in a car and I can't see their face to read the emotion.  I wish people could accept that I will not be insulted if they tell me they aren't interested in what I am saying about myself and /or have what I am saying before.  Likewise, when I tell someone I don't wish to hear what they are saying as I have heard it all before, I don't want them on the verge of tears telling me I hurt their feelings.  Nor do I want them to look right through me and continue on with the story.  Sometimes, no matter what I do, it just doesn't work and I'm truly sorry about that.