People are always telling me more than I want to know. This happens so frequently that I wonder if my face somehow sets up an expectation of sympathy and understanding that my personality can’t deliver on.
Waiting in line is a particularly hazardous undertaking. The bank, the post office and the grocery store offer endless opportunities to trip a TMI land mine. Like people in movie theaters who forget that they’re not sitting in their living rooms—where they apparently take phone calls during movies and talk back to the screen—something about standing still somehow causes people to forget the concept of social boundaries and prompts them to indiscriminately share their personal lives.
Or maybe it’s just something about standing in proximity to me. Clearly inspired by my utter lack of interest, strangers constantly launch into long-winded stories about their marriages, their relationships, their sex lives (or lack thereof), their aches and pains, their political opinions, their mothers.
Mothers are a favorite topic among oversharers—especially among women of a certain age. Many are apparently burdened with unreasonable mothers whose endless demands exasperate them to distraction. (I’m thinking that if you get to be middle-aged without managing to set appropriate boundaries with your mother, then maybe TMI isn’t your worst problem. But I digress.)
I blame Facebook and Twitter. We live in an era of exhibitionism that encourages oversharing. In a moment of excruciatingly poor judgment, Penelope Trunk tweeted her miscarriage, then later tried to justify it as a discussion about a workplace issue that women deal with. But everyone saw it for what it was: a vulnerable moment made uncomfortably public by easy access to social media. (Stop me before I tweet again!)
I've had more than one budding friendship derailed by TMI. Sometimes people feel too comfortable too soon. There's a rhythm to self-revelation—sensitive information requires a context. If we're on a first date, then your story of bad sex with a crazy ex-girlfriend who stalked you constitutes 95% of everything I know about you.
First-date TMI can be chalked up to jitters, but how to explain the new acquaintance who suddenly veers into intimate details about her marriage? Like taking a wrong turn into a bad neighborhood, a pleasant conversation over a glass of wine unexpectedly morphed into a monologue about the balance of power in her relationship, the state of their finances, and the details of their marriage counseling.
Among other things.
Unable to stop her, I listened to everything with the sinking realization that I would never again be able to chat with her husband without feeling profoundly embarrassed for knowing too much about him.
Or spend time with her without the discomfort of knowing so much more about her than I was willing to reveal about myself to someone whom I barely know.
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Twittering vixenish things @WriterVixen
