Thursday, April 26, 2012

Let Me Preface This...

The other day I was in the cheese aisle at the grocery story. Okay wait, I should say, I'm beginning to notice a terrible personal habit. I'm an extreme prefacer. I think many things come into play here.

1. My dad is one of those people who ends up talking for ten minutes about something that could be explained to two sentences. He fills you in with a million details that really have no effect on the story. He tries his hardest to help you remember that, in fact, you actually do know the person he ran into at Costco, while he was buying some shaving cream that was a really good deal, after he sampled some great hot chocolate, but before he remembered he needed more pens. The excessive details bit is just one of the many things he has passed onto me. 

2. A favorite TV show of mine called Felicity. In the pilot episode, our heroine, Felicity, is about to tell her high school crush that she completely changed her university plans and traveled across the country, because of him. This is how she starts- "I just want to preface this by saying that I don't want you to feel weird about anything I'm about to say, at all." Which really, if you hear someone say that to you? You're almost guaranteed to feel weird about everything they're about to say. It's such a classic Felicity awkward moment, I really do love it.

3. My mind is, at times, a wild jungle full of scary gibberish. There are often times my mind ends up in places and I really have no memory of what train got me there. So, because I'm so random, I want to make sure that I'm not bringing my listener into the middle of some random scene in my life. I want to appropriately set the stage. Sometimes, I stop in the middle of telling a story, and add in a preface. "Oh! Before I go on-let me preface this by saying..."

4. Sometimes I just want to tell someone a random fact about my day. So rather than just say one random thing, I disguise it as a preface, even though it has nothing to do with what I'm about to say. "So, just to preface this-I saw a guy with a huge clown wig on today. Okay, so let me tell you about the book I'm reading." To be fair, there's never really a natural place in conversation to mention a clown wig sighting.

5. I often speak before I think. When I start talking, I really do think the preface is necessary. Honest, I do. But then, about 4 sentences in I realize, it's completely unnecessary. I'm working towards thinking before I let words come out of my mouth.

So, I want to apologize if it's ever taken me 5 minutes to simply tell you that the cheese was on sale. Well, I guess I just did.

The cheese was on sale.

There, I did it.
See? I get there eventually!

1 comment:

  1. I just had my first story-telling class today, and I couldn't help but think of you. You should know that you are probably the most exciting and delightful story-teller I know!

    ReplyDelete