First, you have those who hyper-explain things. They take this simplest of things and give you every little detail and nuance, then repeat it, then repeat it again but with a slight rephrasing, then give you their conclusion, and then go from the conclusion back through the premises they gave you leading up to the conclusion. By the time they’ve rambled on for while, you’re all like, “OK, I get it already! Shut up!”
Then, you have those who don’t explain things enough and get irritated when you ask questions. My math teacher in high school was like that with his classes. He explained things once and left you to get it. If you ask for clarification, he would respond with, “Did I stutter?”
The over-explainers are probably related to my sister who, when telling us a story, will give us the names and occupations and all kinds of extraneous detail about people we will never meet. Just get to the point, dammit! “The lady I work with…” will do just fine, thanks.
Too funny. An ex and I were like your sister and you. Um, well, in that regard anyway. If I were telling a story about someone he didn’t know, I’d say “my friend” or “my co-worker” or “this one guy at the group I’m in” and no more. He would tell me their height, eye color, blood type, high school GPA and every other damn thing that makes no difference to the story. Even more odd, he would request these additional details from me when I was telling a story. “Who? What friend? What’s the name? How old? How many deductions claimed on his income taxes?” By the time I was done providing a detailed background check of every background character in the story, it wasn’t even worth telling anymore.
Imagine if you’ve got two of them in a partnership. My late grandparents reminded me of the Costanza family. My granddad telling an anecdote would go like:
“I got the car serviced the other day, and the mechanic said the funniest thing-”
“That was last Tuesday wasn’t it?”
“No, it was Wednesday. Anyway-”
“It couldn’t have been Wednesday because you picked me and Joan up from Bridge.”
“Joan?”
“You know, from the Conservative Club.”
“Jean?”
“No, Jean’s the woman from Bingo. You know, with the son in the army?”
“Well who’s this Joan then?”
“You KNOW. JOAN. You PICKED HER UP.”
“But I picked you up from Bridge on Thursday, because I’d gone to the supermarket that day.”
“Don’t talk nonsense. We both went to the supermarket on Monday night.”
“Anyway, this mechanic… said something funny. This week I think. I’ve forgotten what it was now.”
Some people are all like – well, kind of – um, know what I mean? And then others are more… know what I mean? But mostly they are, well, not really – what’s that word I’m looking for? Whatever it is, they’re not really like that, they’re just kind of, um… know what I mean?
I am often amazed at how many intelligent, educated adults I encounter who are unable to provide clear, concise answers/explanations. The average meeting could take half as much time if these people could just get to the point and present it in a logical manner.
Sometimes I just want to make everyone join Toastmasters and force them to repeatedly provide 90-second table topic responses.
I was thinking more about my brother in writing the OP. He doesn’t get sidetracked by irrelevant junk but he gets bogged down in details and thoroughness. He stays on point and is very logical and articulate, but he explains things back, forth, and sideways in a way that is extremely thorough. No skipping steps, no leaving anything to inference, and ensuring he explains things from multiple angles to ensure there is absolutely no room for confusion.
His has background is precision machinery and aviation maintenance, so I guess being extremely thorough with redundancy is a good trait in that field… but in a social setting … ugh!
I don’t call him as much as I would like because I can’t get off the phone in less than an hour with him.
I wish I knew the secret because my son is an over-explainer who gets lost/sidetracked with meaningless details and I don’t know how to fix it. We point it out to him when he does it, and we suggest things like “see, you could have just said ‘a kid in my class forgot his homework’ instead of all of that” when we catch him doing this, but so far it hasn’t really changed his behavior. He’s 14. I am hoping that it is something that will eventually come naturally with age and maturity…
I’m afraid you have to teach it to them. People aren’t naturally clear and to-the-point. They like to embellish the parts that make them look good, minimize the parts that make them look bad, expound on what they know, skim over what they don’t know, etcetera.
Like the time I took the ferry to Shelbyville. I needed a new heel for my shoe so I decided to go to Morganville, which is what they called Shelbyville in those days. So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time. Now to take the ferry cost a nickel, and in those days, nickels had pictures of bumblebees on them. Give me five bees for a quarter you’d say. Now where were we, oh ya. The important thing was that I had an onion on my belt, which was the style at the time. They didn’t have white onions because if the war. The only thing you could get was those big yellow ones.
The one I seem to run into too often is the person who mumbles some crucial part of the statement, then will repeat or elaborate any bit, except the part I missed because they mumbled it - sort of:
A: <mumble> is coming on Tuesday
B: Who?
A: Tuesday, to have a look at the window
B: Who did you say is coming?
A: He’s coming to fix the window
B: But I didn’t hear what you said when…
A: TUESDAY!
B: WHO is coming on Tuesday
A: He’s going to see if he can fix the WINDOW!
B: Who?
A: The upstairs one that keeps getting stuck open
B: :mad:
A: You know the window I’m talking about - what’s the matter with you?
B: You still haven’t told me…
A: TUESDAY! Fucking hell.
B: But…
A: Fine! I’ll cancel it, if you’re going to be like that.
It’s like, you know, because if the people from those countries, the ones with the no water, and you take, you know, a large portion of the proceeds and re, here’s where it’s gets interesting, reinvest into the mainstream infrastructure of those poor, down trodden, um, constituents who are, you know, like doing the stuff, then they wouldn’t have so much crap happening to them all the time, you know?
My daughter does this; probably because she had speech and language delays as a baby and still has trouble ordering her thoughts.
When she starts putting too many ideas into whatever she is telling me, I tell her to think about how to say it in 10 words and then tell me. Then after saying the 10(ish) words she has to pause and see if I have a question or if I nod or comment in such a way as to indicate indicate I’m ready to hear more. It sounds really uptight to put rules like that around conversation, but for her since it isn’t innate we view it as a skill to be practiced.
I tend to overexplain. I have a slightly over-broad sense of what needs backstory or extra explanation, and I also cleave strongly to the ‘teach a man to fish’ philosophy. I don’t like just giving a basic answer; I prefer explaining why the answer I give is what it is. Most of my coworkers humor me, although in hindsight I realize I probably waste their time more often than not. I often think I should have pursued a teaching career, because lecturing is as natural as breathing to me.
You couldn’t possibly understand my explanation of why people can’t explain things well. It involves people’s inability to understand simple declarative sentences.
