Stone's Throw: Talking To Myself

Talking To Myself

I was riding my bicycle to the bus stop at Britton Plaza exchange in South Tampa one day when the bus went by going the other way. Knowing the bus would get to the plaza before I did, I stopped at a bus bench to wait.

I’m sitting there reading when I hear a voice coming from behind and turn to see this thirty-something guy, shaped kind of like a papaya, heading my way. He’s talking out loud as he walks clutching a half closed soft side satchel, struggling to extract a letter sized envelope. He plops down on the other end of the bench
with a thump, causing my end to rise up, abruptly, about 3 inches. I thought, boy that sure is a heavy satchel. He rips open the envelope and starts reading,
partly out loud.

Suddenly, he pops up from the seat, dropping me 3” with another thump like I’m
falling into a toilet with the lid up, storms off to from whence he came, cursing,
dropping little white shards of paper as he goes, and talking to himself loud enough to be heard at the gas station about a block away. He was clearly upset
about something.  

I start thinking; “Boy he’s a little wacked. Talked coming, talked sitting and talked leaving, all out loud and all to himself. Sure hope I’m gone before he comes back.  Somebody’s going to put him in a wrap jacket if he isn’t careful.” Then I realized I’m saying all this, out loud. The closest thing to me is a porto potty on the construction site close behind and now I’m hoping no one is in there. Then, I’m thinking, “well, everyone at some point thinks out loud, right?” Of course I said that out loud too, so I got on my bike and rode to the next stop. 

Maybe it is common. How many of us do that? I’ve caught myself in the bathroom, looking in the mirror, seeing a fool looking back. I know I came in there to pluck this raging nostril hair, I’ve named Stanley because it keeps coming back thicker, and is now tickling the inside of my nostril. It is driving me nuts and I have to get rid of it now! But I show up in the mirror without my glasses. With my close vision blurriness and my twitchy right hand, I’m not going to attempt to reduce Stanley to a stump without glasses. So I start talking out loud to the mirror. “There you go forgetting your glasses again. You’re supposed to leave a pair on the window sill.  When you gonna’ learn?” As a disclaimer I must add I have not started talking back, or at least I haven’t started talking back with a different voice. ..Yet.  

Is talking to yourself such a bad thing? I mean it’s not as bad as the guy that rides #19 out of the down town exchange who talks to the palm of his hand, and
actually asks it questions.

Curious, I went online and found a site that gave me five good reasons to talk to myself:

1. Talking to yourself doesn’t lead to prolonged arguments. I had to disagree.   

2. Talking to yourself may mean you are talking to the most intelligent person in the room.  I agreed.

3. Talking to yourself unburdens your mind and lets all of those negative thoughts out...  okay.

4. Talking to yourself helps you keep your social skills. ????

I started thinking, “who wrote this stuff?” when I saw the related topics list that
followed and the first one was the “Top Five Signs of Schizophrenia!!” I clicked
out of that window when I saw the question “Were you ever sent to the school
counselor?” Ever? I had a reserved seat in the hallway.

I don’t know why I go online for information except that then I have the computer to talk to. Never the less, following the advice of # 2 above, I decided
it was just fine to talk out loud to myself, as long as I wasn’t sitting on a
bus bench too close to a porto potty next to a talking papaya.

“It’s fine really.” 

“Is not” 

“Is To” 

“Is not.” 

“Is tooo.” 

“Shut up!.”