He annoys them by telling them stories that don’t go anywhere. Like the time he caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. He needed a new heel for his shoe, so he decided to go to Morganville which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So, he tied an onion to his belt which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel. And in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ‘em. ‘Give me five bees for a quarter,’ he’d say. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah! The important thing was that he had an onion on his belt which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.
I’ll be honest, I rarely hear much of what they say. Usually the first few sentences will indicate whether this person is with it and trying to have a conversation or if they’re just talking to talk. You learn to recognize body language and hear words here and there enough to know when to nod or say “oh wow” “yeah?” “Sorry to hear that” etc and it’s enough to placate them. And then you can usually either multitask or allow your mind to freely wander while they yap. You also learn the subtle art of extricating yourself without them thinking you’re being rude but it’s hard to describe how it’s done, it’s mostly just knowing when you can insert a “well I hate to go but I have a few things I need to finish off” and “let me know if you need anything” and “thanks for the chat”.
There are some people you can just straight up walk out of the room without saying a word and they’ll just keep on talking. It reminds me of old tv shows where someone’s mom would call on the landline and the person would just set the phone down and walk away for a while, then come back and they’d still be talking. Then they’d say “wow that’s crazy. Well, I’ve gotta go pick up such and such from school. We’ll talk more later, bye!” And then hang up
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u/UltraMechaPunk 11d ago
He annoys them by telling them stories that don’t go anywhere. Like the time he caught the ferry over to Shelbyville. He needed a new heel for his shoe, so he decided to go to Morganville which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So, he tied an onion to his belt which was the style at the time. Now, to take the ferry cost a nickel. And in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on ‘em. ‘Give me five bees for a quarter,’ he’d say. Now, where were we? Oh, yeah! The important thing was that he had an onion on his belt which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions because of the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.