IF YOU’RE TALKIN’ YOU AIN’T LEARNIN’



Yes, it’s a hideously non-grammatical sentence.

However, it’s one of the cleverest truisms that ever made its way onto a classroom poster. A former colleague of mine used to hang it on her classroom wall. On the occasion, she was referring to students chattering during a class period. But I see that it more importantly refers to daily life these days.

Everyone from the check-out lady at the grocery store to the phone-answerer of a major mail-order firm (who doesn’t seem to realize that she represents a corporation by the mere act of answering its phone) to a close friend desiring to sway political views is guilty of the low-class, devolved offense of constantly interrupting others when they are speaking. In the case of the mail-order responder, she is often interrupting for the purpose of asking the very question that I am already in the midst of answering!

I’ve asked my husband why ours must be an incredibly rude, interrupting generation. He has explained to me that the interrupter assumes that he already knows what the speaker is going to say. Somehow, I refrained from sarcastically replying, “Oh, so now we’re all telepathic?” or even from pointing out how many times HE has made such an assumption, and been 100% INCORRECT. Instead, I retorted, “Well, you know what they say about those who assume: they make ‘asses’ of U and ME.” (No, I‘m not resorting to the modern idiocy of substituting “4” where “for” is needed; nor am I employing “2” for the necessary “to” or “too.” As I sincerely hope that you’ve noticed, I write better than that. Thus, I was only using U to replace “you” within the necessary confines of the joke with which to make my point).

And now here is my point: why has it become so impossible to allow another human being to finish a sentence? Do we want to work out who’s right, or who’s the louder and more obnoxious? Is it because we’ve become too gauche to realize that it is rude? Is it because we devalue others’ viewpoints so thoroughly that we must ignore and talk right over top of them, i. e. just another symptom of the abhorrently selfish “me generation”? Or is it because some people are afraid of just how right (i. e. correct or accurate or logical) the speaker might be, and are therefore eager to cut off the speaker…before he can utter that which they cannot refute and therefore do not wish to hear?? Is Ann Coulter correct?? Is everyone afraid to hear the truth?? It does seem, as she asserts, that liberals are far more likely to interrupt than are conservatives. Is that because they are fearful of being ripped from their ivory-tower fairy-tale dreamland? Is it because they know that we conservatives can expose reality for what it is? Yes, real life is often ugly and insupportable, and the liberals so desperately wish that it might not be so, that they are clinging to the proverbial pipedream. Is that why they fear to allow us to express an opinion?

They are all so quick to say, “Here’s what I think….” But they would never consider asking, “What do you think? I want to hear your views.” Because they do not. In my view, that brands them as guilty and fearful of that truth to which I have alluded.





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