From the Archives: How to be a good listener

Strangers often mistake me for a good listener. I'm not a good listener; I'm just an exceptionally poor escape artist.

Sensible people excuse themselves from one-sided conversations, but I just don't have it in me. I prefer to go limp and say things like, "Mmm" until it's all over.

Once, a teacher struck up a conversation with me in a classroom between lessons. (He was an older chap, and I'd previously overheard him complaining to another teacher about the school's lack of hide-e-holes -- he had no place to take a nap. "My old school had a cupboard under the stairs," he said. The other teacher nodded earnestly.) 

Anyway, this chap was now banging-on to me about his upcoming weekend, about how he had to drive to Wales to visit his poor old mother who was suffering from the onset of dementia; he had to dig a tree stump from the garden, do that to the door, etc, etc. I was nodding, but I was mostly just limp.

"It's hard," he said.

I nodded.

"Last weekend I was down there, after a full day of gardening and what not; I'd just hopped into bed, drifting off, and Mum comes knocking at my door, calling me by my father's name ..."

"Ahh," I said with recognition.

"He's been dead for years …"

"Eee," I grimaced, qualifying that recognition.

"I'd had enough--it had been this and that all day--I just shouted: 'Mum, F**K OFF!"

The words seemed to bounce like marbles down the hallway.

I looked to the side, but the bony finger of Reply was upon me.

"Mmm," I said -- ambiguously this time.

He continued:

"It's tough seein' your parents like that, you know?"

I nodded tentatively.

"Walkin' round like a zombie ..."

I nodded more readily, sensing the pity in his voice.

"Eatin' up your inheritance."

Mmm. Now where's a hide-e-hole when you need one?