Thursday, June 28, 2007

Trains of thought

I tend to jump around a lot in my conversations. I will have a discussion on one topic, then switch to another topic in the natural progression of the conversation, then I will suddenly bring up the prior topic as though we had never left that subject. It takes my friends some time to get used to that.

Another thing I do is think about something while I'm talking, and use that as a random jump from one point to another, which makes perfect sense to me, but none to the person with whom I'm conversing. For example, We could be discussing lunch, and perhaps we had chinese food with shrimp. I would then (in rapid succession) think about how I once had shrimp at Bennigan's and thought that the batter was bland. Then I would think about how there is a Bennigan's in Seoul, and how we never went there, but we did go to OB Station, which had all you could eat Mongolian BBQ, and that there wasn't an all you can eat at Osan, or in Songtan (the city next to Osan AB), and that we often would just hang out at the Skivvy-9 lounge on base, and then I would remember that we almost always played Euchre while at the lounge, which would remind me that just about everyone in Michigan plays Euchre, and then I would think about how it would be nice to go back to Michigan to visit again sometime, and how the last time I went, my pa and I went fishing with my uncle Bill up at the folks' cabin on Mud Lake, where I caught three Pike, though none of them were keepers. I would then say to my friend "Pike have some sharp teeth," to which my friend would reply "uh, random." But as you can see - it's not random; it makes perfect sense.

Recently, I've taken to explaining my train of thought for my friends. They seem to enjoy the destination more after they've travelled the path.

3 comments:

Cassie said...

...or they just want you to be quiet.

I have the same problem. I guess it's a family thing. I often go off the subject but it all leads back to something that someone said or something in the situation.

heatherfeather said...

i do it too.

for instance when we were in the car driving to santa monica with my sister and her friend once, we had been talking about theology, and i asked, "Tony, do you speak Dutch?"

but it was perfectly sensical to me because even though we were talking about something else, i saw a billboard for power 106 (a hip-hop radio station) and thought of how i used to like that station when it was more pop back in my tween years, then how i liked Star more lately, and star has 2 separate channels in california - one in LA the other closer to santa barbara. and santa barbara is really nice and relaxing. but the rest of the area isn't my favorite. for instance, solvang. a dutch tourist trap of a town that's stressful in its quaintness. then i was thinking about how dutch things don't have much of a serious perception in america - it's all wooden shoes, and we can't even tell the difference between dutch and german most times (except if you see a word with 2 a's in a row in it, then it's dutch), but maybe i'd like to learn a few words in dutch, and by the way, isn't tony dutch? didn't his parents move to the US from holland and start a tulip farm? i wonder if tony speaks dutch.

i made the connections just fine.

Steve said...

See, I followed your train of thought perfectly.

Perhaps we aren't the ones with the problems. Maybe it's everyone else.