Someone asked me this week at a group dinner how it was that I had come to have so many conversations with so many people. Well, that wasn’t exactly the question (I am an unreliable quoter, but a reliable get-the-gist-of-thingser), but it’s close enough.
So I asked her (rhetorically, I think), “Ah, but what did I do for twenty years?” (Twenty if you don’t count the barebones waitressing part that began, no lie, when I was thirteen; twenty-eight if you do.) But before this woman had time to answer (which I guess does say something about my ability to talk) (and interrupt), I said, “I was a bartender.”
The words weren’t half out of my mouth when I began doing the math. Let’s face it: if I served fifty customers four days a week, which is probably a good but conservative estimate if I weigh the quieter days with the busier weekends, I have exchanged words with 50 x 4 = 200 customers per week x 52 weeks per year = 10,400 x 28 years = 291,200.
Next, take the nine years I worked with patients – no fewer than 50 people three days per week + 16-50 patients two days per week (depending on whether I was working in the lab or at the hospital/s) = 150 + 50 (more or less) per week = 200 patients per week x 52 weeks per year = 10,400 x 9 years = 93, 600.
Now, when I add 93,600 + 291,200, I arrive at 384,800. That’s a lot of people – the population of Victoria, British Columbia, for one example.
On top of that, for most of those years I lived in a small town where everyone knew everyone or thought they did. And I was a talker. Hey! Not like that! In a friendly how are you did you see that so-and-so is dating so-and-so and do you think it will last sort of way. (Gotcha again!)
Then, when I add in the conversations I had at university + with various writing groups + with my children + with my students + with my friends + with Don + with Mary = oh my God.
And when I recount that Don told me, when I was still in my twenties, that I had more miles on my tongue than most people had in their eighties (hey!) it’s all a little frightening.
On top of all of this, I didn’t just offer people a beer or an eye drop and let it go at that. We had serious conversations: about life, living, death, dying, politics, politicians, writers, writing, behaviour, behaving, children, grandchildren, parents, distant relatives, in-laws, siblings (whoa...the stories people have told me), sports (mostly the Olympics, I confess, although there was some skating and aquatic talk), television, movies movies movies, the economy (mostly I just listened), government (oh, Ottawa), amity, enmity, psychology, psychologists (I could write four books on these discussions alone), plants, planting, cooks (which is everyone I have ever hooked up with), cooking, religion (there was more chitchat about this than you might imagine), business, local businesses, humour, books and more books, music, medicine, sex and sexuality, fashion, general recommendations, beer and wine and spirits (the kind you drink and the kind that go Boo!), furniture, travel, culture, societies, people in general and people specific, mysticism, news and newsmakers, pet peeves and passions, ideology, transportation, hobbies, animals, holidays, environment (mostly I asked), habits, restaurants and bars, live theatre, retirement, career, celebrity, genetics, art, language – and this is merely off the top of my head (which gives me a lop-sided look) – you can see the im/possibilities.
Furthermore, when I factor in all the email (by the thousands) and a blog that now totals more than 300,000 words (which is worth, in word count alone, three Canadian novels), along with the other bits and pieces I don’t talk about here – well, I can tell you I am as dizzy now as I was watching Dan Akyroyd grind up that fish in the Super Bass-O-Matic 76 skit
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BQFv83QJ2Y)
or practically bleed himself to fake-death a la Julia Child
(http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7tnc9_the-french-chef_fun)
Anyway, I figure I have two options: the next time someone asks me how it is possible that I have had so many conversations. I’ll either send them a link to this entry or I'll shut up (and given the odds...).
Two and two are four
Four and four are eight
Eight and eight are sixteen
Sixteen and sixteen are thirty-two...
Frank Loesser (prompting me to add...and add...that the Loesser of two evils = four)
