“Me First!”
Allure magazine recently interviewed me about A Good Talk, and the sharp young woman whom I talked to, Marina Khidekel, asked me what I thought the worst conversational sin was. The answer–or at least my answer–came to me very quickly.
“Me First! ” I said.
This is when you say something and your companion immediately refers it to himself or herself. When, for instance, the remark: “The Good Wife is the best series ever about the law” is met with “Yeah, I applied to law school myself.” Or the response to “I started my new job last week” is “I’ve been in the same firm for five years.”
Of course, using personal experience in answer to what someone else says is often perfectly natural. But not when it becomes a constant reflex. It may be that inattention–the Wandering Ear, I call it–is worse than “Me First!” But “Me First!” itself is a kind of not-listening.
