First Gentleman with Wilson Orhiunu
Email: babawill2000
Michael Jackson was a great man. RIP. Weird Al Yankovic loved to do parodies of his songs and videos and so did we, the good people of Lagos. The chorus of the song ‘Don’t Stop ’till You Get Enough’ was transformed to “oya ko ma fo so ke, omoge fe di le…”
Till date I still play with those lyrics. Today it is – Bros, to listen not by force, shut up we have had enough.
Yes o! My thoughts are with those who love to pound our ear drums with words we did not ask for. The ‘talkaholics’. Asked them a simple question like, ‘you dey craze?’ and they answer for seven hours. You try to escape but cannot. You go to the garden and they follow talking. You pretend to remember that your milk will soon run out and you need to dash to the supermarket and they offer to follow you there. They talk throughout the journey giving you unnecessary information and that important headache. In the shops, just to get a break you pretend you need the toilet and they too decide they need a leak. You are tempted to walk straight into the women’s loo to spare your ear drums but you know the talking machine will follow you there for he is dedicated to his task of homicide by speaking.
People who talk too much can be divided into two main groups.
Crazy men and crazy women. Lets put it this way, if it takes three steps to your bed you take three and if you need to gulp down the water six times to empty the glass you don’t attempt to swallow 45 times. In other words the action must be commensurate to the purpose of the action. So for a Naija man, the soup must match the eba in size and quality while on the other hand, the igbati (slap) must match the offence. For ‘talkaholics’ there is a mismatch between actual information being conveyed and the volume of words being used. The Abuja stadium springs to mind; more budget than bricks.
It is an illness to budget £1 Million to buy a meal for two at MacDonald’s and that same illness is on display with those who talk too much. They budget a voluminous book when a bullet point will do.
Crazy men
These are the ones who repeat stories so many times that they cannot recall who they have tortured with their tales and go on to be repeat offenders. Their basic delusion is that what seems so interesting to them is interesting to the whole world and that includes you. In addition to being deluded, they are not perceptive to others so cannot pick up cues such as looking at your watch for long stretches of time, yawning loudly or interrupting them to say ’you told me that last week’. They tell you again regardless.
To their delusional neurotism and perception deficiency, add the fragile ego complex. They are petrified that no one takes them seriously (and they are right) and desperately want to be admired. That in itself is not a problem. The real problem is they are unwilling to do what the high performance attention seekers do; which is train hard in a field. Messi and Ronaldo are cases in point. They train all day, show off on match days and we rarely hear them speak. We all spend hours speaking about them. When they turn up in public there is a rush for their autographs. They don’t chase you with words; rather interviewers chase them for an audience. When they finally speak, everybody listens and they keep it short and sweet because their actions have spoken already.
Having soundless actions and attempting to make up for it with acres of words is a grandiose delusion. It will never work. It just wearies the poor listener.
Crazy women, aka communication addicts, aka gossips
I need to be careful here. We all know that women have beautiful voices and can talk a man into almost anything. Nice words, for a smiling face with nice lipstick on is wonderful to behold. Men do say that women are pretty but may not say it on the hour every hour like a CNN new flash. There are some crazy women wanting to be affirmed every hour and if they are not, they dive into self praise and go on and on about how good they are. They might be anxious about how they are being perceived and cover it up with oceans of verbosity. They seek attention and when you appear bored they throw in juicy gossip to keep you focused on them. Now if they really want attention why don’t they learn to dance like Beyonce and we all would look at them all day? They expect you to be fascinated with the details and on they go forgetting that conversation is a two-way activity. Many men have been known to sleep off especially in dim lighting and then wake up later without the taking machine noticing. I once went to certify a man dead in his house. He was sat all evening in the living room with his wife having conversation and watching the TV. She did not know he was not talking back, she just kept on talking.
“When Inspector Morse was finished I asked him if he wanted a cup of tea when I got up to go to the kitchen and he did not answer,” she said.
“I touched him and he was cold so I called an ambulance”.
He indeed was as cold as ice. Must have died three hours ago. How can you talk to the dead and not notice? It was a most serious affair and I had to examine the body, looking all professional but inside I was perplexed. Chatting and watching TV with a corpse? Na wa o!
He had not just died but she did notice. She probably was just ‘getting it all off her chest’. Seems the crazy women all have mountains on their chest which is destined for some poor sod’s head.
So in summary, if you talk too much, go for treatment. Everyone avoids you and those you catch in the lift feel their hearts sink. You are not alone, I too talk too much. My solution is to write too much, that way those who want to read will do so of their free will. I even talk in my sleep.
