How to Get a Talker to Shut Up

It's hard to pinpoint just when it happens. But one day the work-at-home mom wakes up and realizes the phone hasn't rung in days.

And thank goodness for that.

I am, by nature, a talker. Friends reading this are snorting at the understatement. There may or may not have been a Victrola needle used in the formative years by a doctor claiming to inoculate me. My parents tried their best to reverse it, but there was nothing they could do. I am a jabber jaws.

Even covering board meetings for the paper, where it's my job to sit down, shut up and listen closely, at times I'm forced to sit on my hands lest I interject. It's just too quiet.

And yet, this working from home thing has found a chink in the armor and burrowed in.

When the phone rings, I want to dive for cover. Oh please, oh please just be a telemarketer, I'm thinking (yes, I do believe I'm the first American to utter such blasphemy and I know what this says about me), because THEM I can send packing in under a minute.

It's the people I like, ironically, who fill me with the most dread. What? They want to talk to me? Don't they know how to send an email? Or a direct message on Twitter? Or heck, if you just want to remind me that you're alive, a "like" on my Facebook status will do. Maybe pin something cute to one of my boards on Pinterest?

It is the miracle of miracles. They have finally found a way to shut me up.

For a little while anyway. Because here's the thing about putting a nonstop talker alone in a room with her computer all day: when the other adult member of her family gets home from work, she now has a full day's worth of "talking" to get out of the way.

Somehow I think he'd prefer a phone call.


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