Well?
By definition for this thread, this means speaking to a human being in person or on a telephone or other real time communication device in which your voice is transmitted to the hearing organ of another human being.
IM’ing, email, message boards, etc, are acceptable.
I went about four days once about 15 years ago.
A few hours at most.
Well, there were the three days in a row I slept when I had pneumonia. My wife has been away for a week, a couple of times, so I wouldn’t have talked to anybody from the end of work Friday to the beginning of it on Monday. Those are about the limits.
About a day.
About two weeks for me. I lived as a hermit in Vermont in the spring and summer of 1996. I didn’t have a phone or even a mailbox. I didn’t want to speak to anyone and I loved it. The only reason the two week silence was broken was because I had to go to the store and buy new food and speak to the cashier. Other than that, I didn’t really speak to anyone I knew or have meanigful conversation for most of those 4 months.
When I lived alone (pre-internet, pre-marriage, pre-kids), I once went about a week without any human interaction. I loved it. Best vacation I’ve ever had, and I didn’t even really do anything but read, watch t.v., and laze around. I want my own place again, dammit.
I spent 5 days hiking the Long Trail in Vermont by myself a few years back. I encountered a couple people on the trail, but would usually just smile and nod as they went by. I may have said “hello” once or twice, but that’s it.
It was terrific. Just me and a whole lot of wildlife and scenery. On that trip I saw a moose from about 15 feet away! It’s amazing how such a large animal can be so hard to spot in the woods. Didn’t even know it was there until it picked it’s head up to glare at me.
I think maybe a couple of days in the early 90’s. More recently, since married, I was lucky enough to get in almost 8 hours!
*on a side-note: How does my wife, who spends 23 hours a day on-line, know the exact second the most important piece of dialog or scene or whatever is coming on the show I’m watching and suddenly blurt out some…something…that makes me miss it? Completely mystifying.
Did you talk (out loud) to yourself, Shaggers, during this period? Just curious.
I’ve had repeated two and three day periods over the course of the past (almost) month while living alone and being homebound. Maybe I can try for four and five day windows over the next month.
I’m not as anti-social as I used to think I was but I do like the alone time to an extent. It’s quite refreshing.
A day or so.
We’ll see this weekend. My roommate is leaving tomorrow morning for a weekend at home and I’ve got the house to myself. Ideally, I’ll be spending all weekend mesmerized by the mechanics of soil and the dynamics of fluids too busy to talk to anyone. If things go off as planned, it’ll be 2 and a half days without talking.
My dog and I went hiking/fishing for four days. During that time I nodded to the occasional other fishermen (a guy near me had a camper and he had brought his cat) but I didn’t really talk to anyone other than the dog.
(I originally thought you meant w/o speaking to one specific other person, such as a spouse, although that person was present. I believe my spouse & I once logged three weeks, almost all the while in the same house.)
Probably three days, maybe four. This would’ve been about a year and a half ago, when I was living alone, I had no car, and the only friends I had at the time were all off at college in other cities. Three or four days would be the greatest number of consecutive days off from work that I’d be likely to get, so that’d be it.
Change the wording a bit to exclude conversations that are utterly devoid of emotional or otherwise abstract meaning (i.e., customer/server interactions don’t count), and that’s a whole new ballgame. I feel it safe to say that three weeks would be no exaggeration. My locale, my age group, and my choice of vocation (coworkers AND clientele) are all filled to the brim with morons. I strongly dislike morons (though I’ve gotten better about that in recent years, both in terms of tolerating stupidity and avoiding labeling others as stupid), so I had very little to say to anybody during that time. It was the Dark Ages of my mentality.
I could say a lot more about that, and almost did, but it’s far too much to go into here. Suffice it to say that I’ve spent looong periods of time existing primarily inside my own head, where the line between “self” and “humanity” were blurred into total ambiguity. Kind of hard to have any meaningful person-to-person interaction when that happens (thank heaven for my best friend, though; without him, Og only knows how long that would’ve gone on). So anyway: three days, or three weeks. Define the question to your liking, and take your pick.
Five days about 2 years ago. Took some time off work to get stuff done around the apartment but ended up sleeping, playing video games, and watching movies the whole time instead.
When I was in college, I would always hunt during thanksgiving. It’s the only time I would have off from classes to go up to camp. Hunting camp has no phone and is in the middle of nowhere. I’d spend 4-5 days alone, without TV. I wouldn’t talk to anyone, but might to myself, especially to crack jokes so that I could laugh. It’s odd making yourself a sandwhich alone for the usually festive family holiday. It’s well worth it to get in some hunting time, though.
Good news: The local radio station plays the annual “Franks Giving” weekend where they play hours straight of Frank Zappa and give out CD’s to callers.
dude, women have a gift for that crap.
my girlfriend CANNOT allow any moment of silence over 2 minutes. it’s ridiculous.
i always listen to NPR in the car, and she always seems to start some important conversation before a story wraps up. or if i buy a new cd and want to listen to it, she’ll either start talking halfway through the first track or she’ll start singing a song that the song playing reminds her of. which is a major annoyance.
i decided one time not to talk to her on one car trip. it was amazing, she’d ask a question, wait a few seconds, and then ASNWER HER OWN QUESTION! she didn;t miss a beat. i think that’s why women have cats. they can talk to them constantly and not feel too much like a freak.
sorry, i just had to vent.
Three days, on a number of occasions, on meditation retreats. There are lots of people around, but people rarely speak, and I try to maintain silence all the way through (except sometimes for one 15-30 minute interview with the teacher).
It’s wonderful. I have to make time for longer retreats.
When I was a teenager, I had a TV in my room. I would literally wait with baited breath for it: when a “big scene” came on the TV ("And the killer is . . . " kind of scene) , more often than not, either my mom or dad would come barging in to nag me, or shriek, or something, and ruin it all for me. I’d hear their footsteps down the hall, right on time. It’s some sort of special radar, I swear.
As far as answering the OP, I can’t say. I have gone on some glorious road trips, where I am sure I talked to no one for most of the day. One was going from Colorado into Wyoming, and a few other times I went up and down the entire state of California. Wonderful, wonderful. I think I did self-serve on the gas and I packed my own food, so I may have gone most of the day without talking to anyone. Just driving around, taking pictures, and enjoying the solitude.
I also know I’ve gone for several days at a stretch (during these road trips) without saying more than a sentence or two a day (just enough to pay for food or my motel room). And it was glorious.
I am astounded to read that for most people here the answer is only on the order of a few days.
Chalk me up as having a handful of two to four week solo and completely socially isolated excursions
If I had to talk to someone everyday without being able to get away for a while, I’d go nuts.