Telephone

I was listening to Doug and Jackie Christie being interviewed on ESPN today. Remember Doug Christie? He's the guy who was on the Sacramento Kings who always flashed a hand signal whenever he went downcourt. Apparently, it was a sign to his wife to indicate that he loved her. A bit creepy, don't you think? What's even weirder is that his wife doesn't allow him to look or talk to other women. Not even normal day-to-day conversation. The producer of the talk show was female, and she indicated that while Jackie Christie talked to her, Doug just looked down all the time. Talk about whipped.

One thing that stood out to me during the interview was the fact that they talk to each other every day for around four hours or so. Four hours. Every day. Geez, what do they talk about? I'm trying to recall if I ever talked to anyone that long. I was pretty much tongue-tied when it came to talking to girls on the phone. JC still makes fun of my aborted conversations with a couple of girls that I tried to call up back in high school. I can't help it; I didn't inherit my dad's charm or my mom's gift of gab.

Some people are just born with the gift of making small talk. True, sometimes there has to be mutual interest between the two people talking. I guess the aborted phone calls I made back then were all one-way, so both of us were eager to put down the phone to avoid further embarrassment.

Thankfully, it got better after high school. College was particularly good; when I started working it got even better. When I was courting PJ we talked to each other every day, just to catch up on things. We were living pretty far apart, since I was in Orange County while she was studying all the way in UCSD. At most we'd talk for an hour, and we'd find stuff to talk about, considering she was going to school and I was working. But four hours plus? Couldn't do it then, can't do it now.

Thank God for Instant Messaging and e-mail. I'm a writer, not a talker.