This post isn’t about a visit of some nun from the local convent as the title might suggest. No, this post is about the yearly visit from my wife’s sister who ventures out from Florida around this time of year and meanders up the east coast via plane and rented auto, visiting various friends and relatives on the way and eventually ending up at our place near the Canadian border. Something we both look forward too with happy anticipation.
This year the visit spanned a full three days. Three full days of talking and going out to eat for dinner at places Laurie and I would not normally visit as we tend to be chronic homebodies. No complaints about that you understand but like I said, the majority of the time is involved with talking, telling stories, relating events and generally laughing a lot–often late into the night. It’s wonderful and exhausting at the same time.
Do people still do this? Talk into the late hours?
I often wonder about this. Is the art of real conversation still alive? I mean outside Faecbook, Twitter and pecking at wee buttons on a mobile phone, is the art of actually talking to one another in more than 140 characters still practiced by the younger generations? You know, conversation that takes place face to face? The kind that happens by taking in breaths, letting them out slowly while flapping your lips and making vocal noises at the same time? Sitting around the deck/living room/kitchen table/wherever telling fart stories and laughing a lot till the wee hours of the morning?
I certainly hope so.
I hope so because my wife, her sister and myself (and our various other relatives, friends and neighbors) are getting rather on in life and there’s not that much time left to teach the younger folk that it’s actually possible to talk to one another without use of a computer, tablet or texting by mobile phone.
Anyway, the point of this post, before I wondered off topic like I usually do, was to point out why I’ve been abstained from my online life for the last three days. I’ve been busy talking, laughing and telling fart stories with my wife and her sister.
She left today to continue her meandering so I now I shall take up the reins of daily routine once more. It’s okay though–I’m pooped!
Outside of family: I think conversations are DOA. 1. Nobody has real dinner parties anymore, 2. Everybody holds a grudge if your opinion doesn’t mesh, 3. Everybody knows everything already because of the innerwebs – or are so ignorant as not to care about a real conversation.
But there is nothing like a good old family gathering (even if it is just three) to bring out the same old LOL stories.
I love those conversations, I have them regularly! Conversations with myself are included, right?
Sixty – I blame the housing designers. Nobody builds front porches onto houses anymore. Front porches promoted gatherings and such where conversation flowed back and forth like the tide coming in and out. Decks don’t count. Decks promote parties, sunburns, out of control drinking and the occasional divorce. We need more front porches.
K8 – Glad you’re carrying on the old tradition. I’m sorry though but talking to yourself doesn’t count unless you’re a diagnosed schizophrenic. Otherwise you always know how you’re going to respond?