I have a friend who is very accomplished in many ways, but is not what I would consider arrogant or prone to bragging. At least, not when it comes to herself. But not infrequently, she will work into conversation the accomplishments of her friends and acquaintances, for what reason I know not. Rather than saying, “I know a guy with the same problem,” she’ll say, “I know a guy who won two ballroom dancing championships and studied in Greece for two years (etc.). He had the same problem.” Like I said, I don’t know why she does this, as it’s certainly not information I’m likely to retain or care about, but my first thought was that she’s trying to impress me; I guess though she could just be proud of the people she knows. Thinking back, I realized today that she is not the first person I have known to do this; she is at least the third.
So here’s what I want to know. Does anyone else know people like this? Does anyone know why people do this? Am I the one who’s abnormal for being taken aback by this?
Maybe it’s just how she thinks of that person. She knows Jim as `the guy who went caving in Borneo and speaks fluent Tamil,’ so that spills out into her conversations whenever she references someone she knows. But it is odd.
I don’t know enough about the situation to make a really good guess, but maybe she’s trying to put the person with a problem at ease? If she’s socially awkward, maybe this is her way of implying, “look, the smartest, most talented people I know have had problems like this, so don’t feel to badly about it”.
My contact with a “friend” like this is really diminishing. The friend always must work in something about someone’s net worth. I don’t know the people being discussed. It is boorish.
My mother is the world’s greatest name-dropper. Mention anyone, no matter how obscure, and she knows someone who knows them, or knows someone like them, or knows someone who once watched a movie in which their hairdresser’s cousin appeared.
My favorite moment – we’re at a dinner, and one of the guys is wearing a Jerry Garcia tie. My Mom oh so casually says to him, “Is that a Jerry Garcia tie? You know, I sat next to him at dinner once.”
Sometimes it’s fun to mention a well-known person and see how long it takes her to come up with a connection. It doesn’t even have to be a well-known person.
Me: “I have a gynecologist appointment”
Mom: “You know, one of Dad’s colleagues has a daughter who is a gynecologist in San Francisco – at least I think she’s a gynecologist.”
And yes, I do think that she does this because she feels that it increases her worth in some way. “Look how important I am, I know all these important people – sort of.”
Well, if what she says is akin to, “I have a friend with a PhD in mathematics and he can’t balance his checkbook either”, then perhaps it is relevant to the conversation.
Mea culpa! Mea culpa! I am just the type of person described. I have several reasons – none of them good enough.
I thought that I had worked through my self-esteem problems, but apparently, I haven’t and I’m getting pretty old.
Besides, unless I talk about my wild and mysterious past, my life is quite ordinary. But I would have to cover the grandchildren’s ears to go into all of that.
Actually, I’m just posting this to let you know that one of my sister’s friends had billing over Ashley Judd in *Divine Secrets of the Ya Ya Sisterhood" and that the Senate Majority Leader and I have a common friend.
Mission accomplished!
I think that some of us find it interesting to hear about other people’s stories of brushes with celebrities and we assume that others are the same way.
WRONG!!!
I will try to reform. I don’t want to bore you with details like how my cousin knew Princess Diana.
I have friend like this… he’s always dropping names and saying it loud so others that are around can hear. I HATE this with a passion. He once spotted Matthew McConaghey at a football game and claimed to have “been his bodyguard” for the day… simply because he happened to be standing behind him. He claims to know all these people that I coudn’t give a shit about… and regails me with stories of how he knows them or knows of them. Geez, I’m SO impressed you know the guy who poses on the front of a romance novel. He is a good guy, but seriously insecure. He thinks people will think he’s “cool” by knowing all these people! Very twisted theory if you ask me, and everyone sees right through it.
I don’t know. I was talking with James Earl Jones and Derek Jeter the other day; we were at Barbra Streisand’s country home, you know; and anyway, THEY said it was just fine…
My mother-in-law does this, and I don’t believe it’s for reasons suggested so far. In some cases, I think she finds the information interesting and figures others will also. In other cases, I think she admires her friends and wants to speak highly of them.
I see it as a characteristic of her way of speaking. I don’t see it as a sign that she’s lacking any self-esteem.
Wow, thanks for the many and various responses, all! I guess that this kind of practice is found in several different kinds of people. As for my friend specifically, I would call it name-dropping, except that these aren’t famous people she’s mentioning. Rather, it’s not like she’s acting that celebrities are people she knows; she’s acting like people she knows are celebrities. If that makes any sense. I don’t think she has an insecurity problem, and she is not, in general, trying to make anyone feel better about themselves - that quote in the OP is just an example; it doesn’t only come up when someone has a problem. I think that maybe she does in fact just think of people this way, as Derleth says. But she goes into way too much detail for it to be only that. The way she talks about it, she knows a lot of very smart, very talented people. Gee, now I wonder if she uses me the same way when talking to others! I don’t know if that’s good or bad.
Why bother? I wouldn’t tell you about my friend who’s working on IBM’s Siebel, another friend is a professor in Computer Science, and another one was in the Barry Crane 5000, and so on…
