Telephonic Talkin'

Stupid phones.

For some reason, I can't hold a decent conversation on a phone, not even to save my life. Something about talking on the phone just throws me off. There are always long awkward pauses, or I end up trying to talk at the same time as the person on the other end. No matter what I do, my conversations always tend to be staggering and unnatural. That's one of the reasons I'm not really a call-you-up-and-talk kind of person.

Luckily, I can usually hold a decent conversation when I need to, telephone handicap or not, but it's still frustrating the rest of the time.

I think part of it might be that there's a small lag with my phone that throws off my conversational timing. A larger part, though, might be that when I'm on the phone, I can't pick up many of the non-verbal cues that I rely on for timing and use to form my response. Often times people will say that 80-90% of the way we communicate in non-verbal, and while I've never been sure the number is that high, I will definitely agree that removing the non-verbal communication makes life difficult.

Some people can talk on the phone like they were born doing it, but I'm not one of them. Hope you can forgive me if I blunder my way through phone conversations. It doesn't reflect on you, I promise.