Apparently I have a “getting off the phone voice.” I’m not disagreeing with that assessment, I’d just never thought about it before. A friend told me she needed to go “pretty soon” after we had been talking for a while tonight. That says to me “this conversation is done right here. Everything from this point on is just reminders and fluff.”
Maybe that’s not how everyone looks at it (feel free to chime in on the comments), but I do. It could be that I’m just efficient. It’s probably just that I’m impatient and I don’t like transition (I’ve got a draft waiting for completion that’s about hating transition… you might see it one of these days). But once the thought enters my head that the conversation will at some point end, I immediately reach that point in my own mind. And I just don’t like the rest of that “fluff.”
My “getting off the phone voice,” in my opinion and after only about 3½ minutes consideration, gets more intense the longer the farce of a conversation lasts after any variation of the “I’ll need to go soon” line. As I’ve said before, this reminds me so much of a couple of loathe-to-answer-the-phone relatives of mine that I have to laugh at myself a little. But I feel like you should be definitive about whether you are having a conversation or not. Don’t be unsure whether you’re still really talking about anything meaningful anymore.
Which brings me to another realization. One of those strange things that annoys me is when people get off the phone and instead of saying simply “bye,” it is drawn out into “mmmbye” (You’ll notice now that either you or someone you know does this). I remember noting that several people I know do this sometimes, but I can think of one person in particular who does it every time she gets off the phone with anyone.
Why does it annoy me? I’ve never known until tonight. I actually mentioned this to Riley the other day at work. I was cut off in the middle of a sentence by the person on the other end (like me, trying to get off the phone as quickly as possible once the primary purpose of the conversation was accomplished) and accidentally committed the crime of elongating my adieu by cramming in a “bye” before the click and also before I’d stopped speaking my last syllable. Justifiable, I would say, but still obnoxious coming out of my own mouth.
Another friend of mine has noticed this particular personal pet peeve, but didn’t quite hit the nail on the head. She thought I just hated talking on the phone period, which I do not. I love talking on the phone, probably more than most guys and certainly than anyone as genetically predisposed to avoice tele-oration as myself. But I do enjoy it, particularly with every single one of the individuals that have been anonymously mentioned herein. But say you’re thinking of anything other than staying on the phone for the next six hours and not only am I finished, but I want a three-letter valediction.
My mom is a “mmmbye”er. She also has the ability to take 10 minutes to end a conversation by throwing in a few “mmmkay”s and “Now, what was I going to ask you?” It has become a joke in my family.
I’m with you on this rant 100%.