My kids are starting to complain about it, and frankly they have a point. The thing is that it’s very difficult to remember whether you have or have not told this specific story to this specific person.
Not sure what to do about it. But I’m starting to use “stop me if you’ve heard this before …” with increasing regularity.
When they were little my kids didn’t remember jokes for very long so repeating them was fine. As they got older they did get tired of hearing old ones again. Not always though, I could see when they’d start smiling as I began because they wanted to hear it again. For other people, there’s enough jokes and enough people that I don’t have to repeat myself, but I do anyway.
It can get tougher as you get older, but I find it keeps you (me) more honest. Nothing’s worse than embellishing a story you’ve previously told a lesser version of to the same audience. (<-- hyperbowlee)
Didn’t you just ask us this the other day?
mmm
God! My Dad has like a utility belt full of corny jokes, sayings, and stories that he has been repeating for years and it never gets updated. Its subconscious or something he doesn’t even think about it, if an ideal situation to tell the joke presents itself he just spews it out of his mouth. Get some new material!
Oh yes. Currently I refer to it as “meno-brain”. However, I won’t be able to use that excuse forever.
I don’t think it’s a brain thing. I think it’s just a statistical issue.
The longer your history is, the higher percentage of things you say are things you’ve heard or happened to you a long time ago. And the higher the percentage of things you say that have happened a long time ago, the likelier it is that you’ve already told them to any random person. Plus, a higher percentage of your relationships are longer term, where you’ve had more opportunity to relay the incidents/jokes/stories.
For example, if you’re 40 and something happened to you when you were 10, then you’ve had 30 years to tell over that incident. And that increases the likelihood that somewhere over those 30 years you’ve actually done so, to your spouse of 15 years for example.
But if you’re 25 and in a relationship for a few years, then most of you have to say is things that have happened fairly recently, and you haven’t had as much of a chance to relay them to the people in your life yet anyway.
I used to be quite good at remembering who I told what (for years afterwards even). But now … I try to be careful. If it’s not important I don’t repeat if I can’t be sure. If it’s important, I’ll ask first if I’ve already told them.
(OTOH, when I was returning the rental car during our recent trip, I noticed the guy doing the checkout was also the same one who did the checkout … 3 years ago at a different site. Mentioned it to him. Confirmed he had worked there but even he wasn’t sure how long ago he worked there.)
I have 10 anecdotes. 7 of them don’t make sense anymore, 2 don’t show me in a very positive light, and I think the last one happened to someone else.
I do however know a fair number* of jokes about bees, which makes up for it.
I find myself doing this and, sadly, don’t even reasonably have the OP’s excuse of it being difficult to remember which specific people have been regaled with which specific story. One, I don’t have that many interesting stories. Two, my social circle is tiny. I hate finding myself in the middle of a story, realizing I must have told it to this person before, and trying to determine whether the listener doesn’t recall it or is just being polite by not exasperatedly reminding me that, “yeah, yeah, I’ve heard this before.”
Which leads to my question. What’s the best way to handle the third repetition of the same story in the last three weeks? Personally, I’d kind of like to be cut off, but my standards of acceptable levels of politeness may fall outside the norm.
Yes, I do. My kids laugh at me.
Yes, I do. My kids laugh at me.
Add in that certain people/situations/events may remind you of specific jokes. One recent example: I play a lot of bluegrass music. One guy in one jam session infrequently calls a song that has a line “I wish I was a mole in the ground.” Hearing that reminds me of one of my fave dumb jokes involving moles. He probably called that song no more than 3-4 times over the past couple of years, but I bet I told that same joke after every time. The last time he made some joking response. I sure hope I remember and restrain myself the next time he calls that song!