To not care about people I have never met!

[topcat2014]

Now, for context, I am not talking about people in the news. And I would never wish ill health or bad luck on anyone.

However, DW likes to give me a run down of all the people she has dealings with each day - none of whom I have met. Thus, I can't visualise any of them or keep track of their stories.

Thus, I come up as disinterested - which is kind of true - but the reality is I just hear it like Charlie Brown's teacher "wah, wah, wah".

I think it is that I find it hard to follow the conversation when I have no idea of the people. A bit like I struggle to follow the Archers.

It’s even better when the storyteller can’t actually remember anyone’s name.
“I saw that old friend of yours the other day, you know, the blonde one? The one who married that builder bloke who did the extension for that nice couple down the road. You remember them, their daughter went off to live overseas somewhere. And their son works with that other friend of yours from school.”

Yep, clear as mud.

Ha! My aunt does this "blah blah blah, Chris's twins - you know Chris." I don't know Chris.

I do however make an effort to listen to my husband and remember who he talks about at work. It's part of his working day, it's important to him, and it's just common courtesy. So as it's your wife, you're being a bit unreasonable.

Both my parents do this. It drives me mad.
Mum Do you know Susan Smith?
Me: No
Mum: Well she just bought a house in Surrey and is getting married next May to Paul.
Me: Ok
Mum: Have you been watching X TV show?
Me: No I never watch it.
Mum: Proceeds to tell me in detail what happened on the last episode despite me not knowing or caring about any of the characters.

PIL do this but their social circle (and general life) is incredibly small. They mainly go on about this couple that own a B&B near us (where PILs stay when they visit as they live the other end of the country). We literally know every single thing about this couple, but completely don't care.

It goes both ways though... We were out in town the other day and a lady came up to us and started chatting to the DCs (by name) and asking me questions about the house move, DS at school, etc etc. I just stood there in stunned silence. Until she said "you don't recognise me do you? I'm Cath from up the road". Still none the wiser until the penny dropped that it was the B&B lady (clearly I was unable to recognise her in person given I only know her life story and not who she actually is). Presumably she's been told so much about us (with photos!) that she actually thinks she knows us. So strange.

My Dad used to have a great anecdote about a couple of "old biddies" who lived near him when he was a boy.
They'd stand in the street and the conversation would be along the lines of, "Ooh hello Mavis."
"Morning Beryl."
"Did you see the cat?"
"Ah bless it, yes."
"Yes"
"It was sitting on the wall."
"Yes, the wall. Just sitting."
"It wasn't there earlier."
"No?"
"Not on the wall..."
And so on for a good ten minutes.

Well, thank your lucky stars none of you will ever do this, because as you age, your world will never become smaller

My mother has always done this. Since retiring she does it less. When she worked in a school she had a never ending list of staff and pupils to confuse me with. She still occupies the same amount of time talking about other people but fewer people. It's just how she is. MIL doesn't do this. She talks about books, films, TV, the garden, what they've been up to, what they think about what is going on in the world. I love my mother dearly, but wish she could focus on our family during our precious time of talking rather than randoms I've never met. She'd be hurt if I told her though.

What do you talk to her about?

Just like AIBU really. Long discourses about people you don't know, have never met, where people become completely invested for ages.

My mum does this. It doesn’t help that all her acquaintances seem to be called Jackie, Carol or Margaret. Recently, I was listening to one of her anecdotes about Margaret, and decided it must be about Margaret-up-the-road rather than Margaret-from-Church. Nope, it was an entirely new Margaret whom I had never heard of.

My mum also interrupts herself during anecdotes. “On Wednesday morning, no wait, I went to Tesco’s so it must have been Tuesday, I got on the bus, hang on, which bus was it? The 4, no, the 5, yes the 5. So the bus was going past that bit, you know, near Poundland when Carol got on the bus and she sat next to me and she said...”

My auntie does this, constant life updates on her colleagues. None of who I know or have ever met. ‘Oh louise is getting married in May’ I’ve no idea who she is and do not care. Yes you worked with her for years but I didn’t did i.

MIL does the TV thing. Asks us every week if we watched the Supervet. No we never do. Then tells us about some poor disabled dog having a massive operation. And how she’d leave home for that vet. Every. Week.

I do however make an effort to listen to my husband and remember who he talks about at work. It's part of his working day, it's important to him, and it's just common courtesy. So as it's your wife, you're being a bit unreasonable

I agree with this but it does depend what level of detail. I'd only tell my husband things about my work colleagues that are relevant to him. Like someone's holiday if it is to a place he would like to visit. If your wife is talking about loads of different people and expecting you to remember who they all are and each of their back stories you could ask her if it is relevant to the story that you remember who the person is.

Well, look at all you lot talking about people I've never met . Talk about pots and kettles.

I quite like this! Surely everyone does it? I like people and I like hearing stories about them. I really object to those saying small minds talk about people; understanding people means understanding how the world works.

My mum also interrupts herself during anecdotes. “On Wednesday morning, no wait, I went to Tesco’s so it must have been Tuesday, I got on the bus, hang on, which bus was it? The 4, no, the 5, yes the 5. So the bus was going past that bit, you know, near Poundland when Carol got on the bus and she sat next to me and she said

Catten I can relate!

I used to burble on until I watched a comedian mention this in their act and it dawned on me DH must bite his tongue so often.
In my defence, doesn't everyone do this at some point? DH retains details of conversations with colleagues from way back. I can't recall the people let alone the discussion!
To paraphrase Blackadder, the winter evenings fly by.

My Mum is a lovely kind person who I love to bits but she can be really boring when she tells me boring stories about boring people I've never even met.
I take the honest approach. I just tell her straight. "Mum, I'm sorry but this is really boring. I've no idea who you are talking about and it be boring even if i did"

Maybe people wouldn't develop lonely and narrow lives if they didn't scare off everyone with their fantastically boring conversations?

Yes yes to this. I don’t mind if it’s an interesting story but it so very seldom is!

The other thing I don’t get is people getting all tears eyed about their ancestors on tv shows. These are people they had never heard of before the show was made and then they get all choked up about their life stories. And genealogy bewilders me as well. My SIL (married to my brother) has done a massive family tree of our side of the family. When we visit our area of origin she arranges side trips to visit church yards where Great-great Aunty this or Grandad that was baptised or married and takes photos of the graves or parish records. I don’t CARE!!

I love my family dearly. I will happily listen to stories about their youth and the family they remember but I cannot have no interest in people none of us would ever have heard of without exhaustive internet research.

Yep, my sister does this and I just switch off. I get a full run down of who said/did what at her work, her neighbours, her children's latest boy/girlfriends. Never met any of them, so havn't a clue who they are and not the slightest bit interested.

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people

All can be equally tedious if all they are doing is delivering a long monologue and aren't entering into a two way conversation.

I think it's a form of verbal diarrhoea - they just can't bear not talking, so just rabbit on about anything.

DW likes to give me a run down of all the people she has dealings with each day - none of whom I have met. Thus, I can't visualise any of them or keep track of their stories.

I think there's a difference between having having a conversation with your wife talking about work colleagues who are presumably an ongoing and important part of her daily life and getting a periodic run-down from an elderly relative about the haemorrhoids of someone you might have once met when you were ten.

My DH works freelance, and most of his 'colleagues'/clients on projects are abroad, so he travels to see them, and I've never met them. But he's amusing about them, and I find what he says about them entertaining, despite the fact that I will almost certainly never meet most of them -- one had a baby some time back with a well-known married UK public figure, and another is married to a member of a formerly extremely famous band, and there are some amusing backstories involving inherited objects of value and disputed family trusts etc.

Perhaps it's less an issue with someone talking to you about people you don't know than about people talking to you in a boring way about people you don't know?

With my mother, it's simply that she doesn't know how to tell a story, which might in itself if it took one minute to tell in a direct way have been quite interesting, but not when she can't state the essential facts up front, or forgets a crucial bit, and then goes back and says 'Oh, I should have said that --' or goes off into endless side monologues. She's literally incapable of a simple statement like 'Last Sunday, I met Relative X when I was buying the papers in Y, and he said that he has a new book about local history coming out, and that he'll send us a copy.'

And as pps have said, it's not age with her. She was exactly the same when I was a child.

My MIL used to do this (she has dementia now and can just about remember who SHE is) but it was always about people she cared for when she worked in a home, most of whom were probably dead, none of whom I had met. And she used to repeat all these stories so much that I knew them word for word.

Now my 13 year old dd has started doing it, about kids I don't know and have never heard of from her school! And it's all teenage bollocks so it's a bit Vicky Pollard, although she herself is nothing like Vicky Pollard... Sometimes I pretend to be interested because she's my dd and ony 13 but sometimes I have to say, please, just stop talking! I don't care if Mia called Caitlin a fat heffer and got detention so she gave Mrs Frame the finger behind her back! I don't know who they are!

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

Ah come on, that's a bit unfair.

MIL does this constantly. She tells me all about Jan's knee operation (Jan thinks the surgeon has done it all wrong you know), Vivien's thatch is costing a fortune (not a euphemism) and how the local WI will fall into complete mayhem if she resigns as president. It's driven me mad for years, but she's 79, a widow and lives on her own in a tiny village (which is a hotbed of gossip) and she spends all her time with these people. She doesn't really have anything else to tell me. So, I find myself asking about Jan's knee and Viv's thatch just to make her happy.

My mum will tell me at length about the games played by the little boy next door, or the woes of her cleaner with the four children, and their good-for-nothing-father, but Her Dad has a heart of gold and looks after the kids whilst she works etc. etc...

Absolutely knows diddly-squat about her grandkids though :(

I did accidentally get copied into an email she sent to a friend (who she hasn’t seen for several years) recently. Half of it was bitching about someone else said friend is never likely to meet.

Please, spare me from going the same way.