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.

My Mum and DH do this. They both get short shrift and told to get to the point.

My mum does this too. Drives me bonkers. She doesn't even stop when I say 'I don't care......'

Is it not an age thing?
No, I shared an office for years with two women who both did this, both were younger than me one 30s and one 50s. I knew all their neighbours, family members, family members activities and ailments. They never seemed to think it odd to tell me stuff about someone I had never met and was never going to meet.
My mother did it all her life.

Vivien's thatch is costing a fortune

If Vivien has the same astonishingly good-looking young male thatcher who is working on a house in our village at the moment, she may find herself also dealing with the problem of him drawing a small crowd, especially when, on a warm afternoon, he took of his shirt.

Maybe Vivien should charge admission, and try to recoup her thatching costs that way?

I generally don't mind this, I like hearing dhs stories about work people and events of the day, but, they're usually genuinely funny stories and the people sound like right characters.

Mil on the other hand tells me long winded boring stories about people I've never even heard of, about how her aunties, cousins goddaughter is going on holiday to Spain and the aeroplane was really cold, and she put her dog in kennels, wtf?

I am guilty of doing this to poor DH, but I work in HR and cannot bitch and moan to anyone at work about other people at work, so I have to come home and offload all my pent up anger. He is quite good at pretending to be interested

My lovely mum used to do this & GarthFunkel's post made me both laugh & cry at the memory.

❤️ It’s funny the things that annoy us but we really miss. With my grandma it was telling us off, as grown ups, for sitting on the arms of a chair. Even in our own houses. When I do it now I always get up and say “sorry grandma”

which is a hotbed of gossip
I’m the same with DDs playground stories. “Mummy, you’ll never guess what happened with x,y and z today” and when she only gets half the story I get unreasonably annoyed! Weirder still, I never gossip about anything else!

YANBU. Some people are just boring, though, and cannot seem to help themselves. It is tedious.

A women I've never met who moved to Australia before I was even born was most annoyed she wasn't at my wedding....because she had been bored to tears for 30 years hearing all about me from my dmums monthly phone call and biannual letter She knows more about me than I know about myself

My mum always says "Don't be putting this on that Facebook..." as if I'm going to live stream our chat about Sandra's HRT.

brilliant - I do this apparently & DH generally replies with ' so someone I don't know has done something I don't care about to someone else I don't know'

"It’s funny the things that annoy us but we really miss."

Yup!

I mean I often just ummed & aahed in the right places & tbf, some of the stories about these people I didn't know were interesting.

And of course, when mum died, there they were at the funeral, people that barely knew mum, but she had been so friendly & interested that they felt they had to be there.

My Mum enjoys giving me weekly updates about what the rest of the family are doing, paced with bitchy comments.
"Patrick's moved to Kettering with Susan, Harry's still on the antidepressants, look your aunt bought me this bag it's hideous." Problem is that I'm NC with all of them so have absolutely no interest in what any of them are doing. I just change the subject and time how long it takes before she tries to crowbar one of them into a general conversation. "Oh look at that dog, it looks just like Louise's, she got a Dandy Dinmont a few months ago...Horrible dogs."

MIL is really good at giving spoilers to programs we've never seen.
"Have you seen Doc Martin?"
"No, I might watch it at some point."
"Oh it's ever so good, this week he was horribly murdered. Sorry I've just spoiled it a bit haven't I?"
Thanks, can't wait to watch it.

My mum does this ,she phoned me up last week with the sad news that someone her and my Dad were friends with in the 70,s and 80,s but haven't really seen for about 30 years has died ,it is indeed very sad news for his family but not really for me .

Both PIL do this and it drives us insane. They talk about neighbours who we’ve never met - DH left home 30 years ago. FIL regales us with tales of work from the 70s/80s for hours and I do mean they can go in for 2 hours. And it’s all they talk about, they don’t ask any questions about us, tell us about their week, any planned trips. It’s like they started a conversation in 1984 and it never changed.

Forgot to say, they will also tell us all about the random neighbours grandkid, but won’t actually ask what their own is doing.

I really hate this, one of my friends does this and to be honest I usually switch off, I really don't want to know what her neighbours daughter is up to!

Had this at my MIL’s funeral. Met a couple she had been friends with. Not met them before. It was really hard to make small talk with them as we already knew everything about them and they us

I wonder if my mum's friends grown up children get boring anecdotes about me and my kids ?

My mum does this too, but never gets to the actual point of the intended anecdote. Eg:

Oh my goodness, have you heard the awful news about Susan's new grandson?
No mum, but who is Susan?
She is Sarah's auntie - you know, Sarah from karate? Her dad had the hand? Lived near the Co op? Ooh, I went to the Co op yesterday and I was looking at the reduced section (I got some pork, but I'm not sure what to do with it, so ive put it in the freezer as I had the chicken to eat already....) , anyway and I saw Carol and she's just back from New York and she had a lot of turbulence on her flight so she might go on a cruise next. She's thinking about the fjords...

And I will never know what happened to Susan's grandson.

"It’s funny the things that annoy us but we really miss."

This x 1000. I used to speak to my mum on the phone every day and I always asked her not to ring at 7pm as that's when we sit down to dinner. She would, every night, ring me just as my arse was about to hit the chair to sit and eat. I would answer and say 'We're just sitting down to eat, I'll ring you in 10 minutes' and she would be all surprised.

This happened every bloody night for years and drove me round the bend, but now that she's no longer here I would give anything to have the phone ring at that time and partake in a 15 minute conversation about a load of old shite about people I didn't know. They all had a nickname too 'You know that woman from the library, Weird Walk Woman?

YANBU not to care. DH and I deal with this by him offloading his daily dealings and me mine and neither of us really interacting with what the other is saying - just the same as having the radio on in the background while cooking dinner etc.

Actually we both get equally perturbed if either starts to show a suspicious level of interest in the goings on of irrelevant workmates.

We have teenagers who live in Kevinland and a 7 year old obsessed with Pokemon so we have to make our own entertainment.

The polish family next door to my fil leave their washing out ALL NIGHT apparently. He didn't bother telling us he'd been booked in for surgery though

My DM does this about people she met ONCE on holiday The worst thing is, if it turns out they live in the same city as me, she tries to get me to meet up with randoms as she thinks we'll have so much in common. TBH it's just weird and I think ppl are just being polite, they don't really want to meet her entire family! But I don't mind some stories/gossip, sometimes it's quite entertaining and she talks about plenty of other things as well.

My DP does this too. I don’t mind too much because I have come to know his colleagues through his stories over the years and I probably visualise them all wrong but I do it nevertheless . I also do it about my colleagues so I really don’t have room to complain.