A Man of Too Many Words but Too Few Things to Say

I lead a lonely unproductive little life that impels me for psychological reasons to inflate even the most inconsequential things I do into matters of alleged import.

Like the sentence you just read.

It could have been written with many fewer words ( Many fewer ? See, I did it again), but I felt the need to throw in needless adjectives and prepositions to make what I said sound more intelligent. Instead, it had the effect of almost making you gasp for air before finally reaching the end.

Brevity is the soul of wit. Superfluity is the pith of dullness.

But there I go again, wasting your time by repeating a couple of expressions you’ve heard a million times.

The people most like me are flight attendants. No matter how inconsequential what they have to say is, and that includes virtually their entire discourse, they take twice as long as necessary to say it. Their words are like escaping gas--they’ll fill up any space in which they’re confined. Indeed, the more inconsequential the message, the more they’ll stretch it out.

How many times have you heard them say, “As the aircraft continues taxiing toward the terminal gate here at Orange County’s John Wayne Airport, we at Vesuvius Airlines wish to convey to you on behalf of Captain Billy and the entire crew for today’s flight our sincere thanks for choosing to fly with us today and to wish you well if this is your final destination or wherever your final destination may be and to ask that you please keep us in mind should your travel plans ever call for air travel in the future.”

They can’t bring themselves to say simply, “Thanks for your business. Get ready to get off the plane.”

Even if you don’t fly, you all know people like me--empty canisters of human beings with bloated egos, that is.

They’re the kind of people who can’t wait to tell you first thing in the morning about the dream they had the night before. It never occurs to them that any dream of theirs is of no interest to you and that even if you could analyze it for them, you wouldn’t bother. Who cares if they dreamed they saw their long-dead uncle sitting in a rowboat in the middle of a lake, wearing a Viking helmet and with tears streaming down his face?

I have a friend who leaves the room whenever someone begins recalling a dream. He says people do it around him all the time, and I don’t have the heart to tell the poor slob that, in his case, they’re only doing it because they want him to leave.

But in most cases, people stay. It’s another immutable law of nature: People who aren’t boring never have the heart to tell people who are boring just how boring they are.

Anyway, I’m straying from my chosen topic (not at all uncommon, by the way, for people with self-inflated senses of their own importance. The thinking is that no matter how far they stray, they can always come back to the original topic and the listener will continue to be fascinated).

What was my topic . . . ? Oh, yes, the psychology behind boring people feeling compelled to talk or write about insignificant things they do.

Something utterly inconsequential happened at my home last week, and I couldn’t wait to tell a friend about it the next morning. If it had happened to an interesting person, he wouldn’t have said a thing about it. I, on the other hand, considered the entire episode so rich in drama and comedy that I practically serialized the account of it.

What happened was, I walked into the kitchen about 10 at night and saw some ants on the counter--the first disgusting little pismires of the season. Because I fear all bugs but can’t stand to squash them, I swept them into the sink and washed them down the drain.

That’s it. That was the story I was dying to tell the next day.

“Well, I saw them marching across the counter. . . . Well, ho-ho, I tried to brush them off into the spider web on the baseboard. . . . Oh, I got goose pimples when one got on my arm, ha-ha. . . . Oh, it was war, let me tell you. . . . “

My friend listened politely, offering an occasional observation. Later in the day, when I was more settled, I realized he hadn’t said much during the conversation. Apparently, listening to a grown man talking about killing four ants wasn’t worthy of his precious time.

He was right. Sure, it was kind of interesting, but probably not 15 minutes’ worth. Oh, who am I kidding? It wasn’t interesting at all. I just thought it was, because it was the most interesting thing that happened to me that night.

What a self-important prancing loon I am. What a bag of air I can be.

I just hope to God I’m the only one who sees it.