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 late parents did this.

Imagine Garthfunkel's little turn, crossed with Mrs Doyle from Father Ted.

Ahh sure, you do remember Jacky! You DO!

You went to primary/nursery/Brownies with her!

As well as starting most phone conversations with "Do you know who's died?"

Ah sure, you know Tommy/Patsy/Mike/Micky/Mrs Doyle! You do!

"So I says to him, did you come via the M6? And he says, no, I went off at the A6 and then joined the B6263 from there. I says, I always avoid that way cos there's a big pothole just past the turnoff, you know, the one with the phone box. He says, oh. I says, I bent my axle by driving over it once..."

What is it with dads and driving? Mine was the same.

"And when you turn off the roundabout you'll see a bungalow - not the first one, the second one - it's got a hedge - mainly privet but there's some beech in there as well. There's a pub just opposite. It used to be called the Fox but they changed it to one of these trendy names - you'd have to go down into third because there's a bit of an incline . . . "

I swear that the Irish do a particular specialty in these people. Thus, the Boring Priest from Father Ted and Colm from Derry Girls.

"We run the gas off the electricity and the electricity off the gas and we save two hundred pounds a year, but then a few weeks later, ah god, I'll never forget it now, we got a new boiler..."

My OH does this. Recants his work day using nicknames so you'll get 'Beefy and Tiny had a right row and Big Bird had to step in'

Laughing out loud my DH does exactly the same! I used to zone out but over time I find myself invested in these people and their relationships and I’ve never laid eyes on most of them 😂 I need to get out more

Schadenfreude it frustrates the hell out of him when I refuse to get drawn into his driving route discussions. He'll ask me which way I went, and I say "Oh, you know, just the usual." It's definitely a dad thing!

Mil does this and goes on about people who died years' ago. Goes into the minutiae of her shopping at Lidl or just general rubbish. She has no friends so probably lonely understandably but it gets too much.

Dm does it too but usually about people I went to school with whose mum she knows so I don't always mind

Mil does this and goes on about people who died years' ago

This makes me sad... we’ll all be there someday

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.

I remember Patsy Kensit doing just this on an episode of Who Do You Think You Are some years ago. She had an ancestor who turned out to be a gangster...cue lots of emotional sniffling and teary eyed camera confessions about this dreadful person. Then she found another ancestor who was a clergyman in the East End...cue lots of emotional sniffling and teary eyed camera confessions about this angelic man who tried so hard to help the poor of London. By the end you wanted to hand her a rather large grip and tell her to calm the hell down.

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

You took the words right out of my mouth! I’m always surprised by people who feel so enraged/sad about people they’ve never met/read out threads to their partners about people they’ve never met. I actually read the title of this post on Saturday and thought that the post was about something like that but didn’t get a chance to read it until today.

I get my oh working day recanted in detail every call every customer, every fag break. Does my head in.

I also get updates from my mom on her extended family many of whom I never met but I am expected to keep pace with birth every death unless and spat in the family

Finally I do get updates on old school friends, I don't mind those

OP I would be wondering why your DW does this. Is it because of a difficulty in switching off, as it were? You might like to think about how you could help if you think this is a problem, turning the negative into something positive.

Personally I would rather someone talk to me about this stuff than make idle chat about the weather or empty conversation for the sake of filling silence.

I work in a garage and the amount of empty small talk and halfhearted conversation drives me mad, I dont care about that, however hearing stuff like the above, whilst I dont know the people theyre talking about they obviously want to tell me something interesting about their friends or family and I will listen. I might not actually care personally about the stuff but i find it much easier to tolerate than listening to people who spill out nonsense about the flipping weather etc. When people like this talk to me I am more likely to engage with them at a later date.

May be I'm just odd!!

You're all lucky, someone I know does this but only uses people's initials as she doesn't want to gossip about actual people. So along the lines of I saw H last night her son D who's friends with J who I told you about etc, drives me nuts.

When my mum starts a conversation with 'you know Marj, the one whose husband rn off with the Russian- I know Im in for the long haul!

My mum gives directions by pub. So her directions involve instructions like "second left at the Grapes then just before you get to the Royal Oak take a right at the roundabout and keep going until you get to the big junction with the Queen's Head in front of you." It's quite effective as long as you remember that these are the names of the pubs as they were in the 1980's and they are probably now bistros, gastro pubs and curry houses

Her wealth of knowledge of the pubs of west London does make me feel there are probably some interesting stories in there just trying to get out but being subsumed by Roger's prostate and Brenda's disastrous haircut!

Does anyone enjoy listening to mundane tales of folk they don't know?

I think this is a sign of poor social skills. My mum does it and so does one of my friends and I wish I could just say "please don't talk to me about people I don't know because it's boring for me".

Why can't I say that?
Probably because I'm secretly convinced that I bore them too sometimes with stuff I just want to talk about but that nobody is really interested in and I'm so grateful that they listen 😖

Ugh my mother and MIL both do this. My mum is the worst though, she goes into long rambling tales about people at work, and petty disputes that are being played out like soap operas.

I wouldn't mind so much if it were just at me, I've perfected the 'mmm hmm' over the years but she does it in a room full of people. We had a gathering at ours this weekend for DCs birthday and when I came down from putting the children in bed I found her holding court to my in-laws - about Dawn from the tech team and her missing crockery dramas at work - who were all sat glassey eyed listening politely looking bloody bored rigid!

I just wanted to shout 'Mum! No one bloody cares, shut up!' Honestly the woman has no social skills. I however do, so I just nicely changed the subject

People like this have always been around. Mrs Nickleby (in Charles Dickens's novel Nicholas Nickleby) is exactly this type, wittering on brainlessly about people her children either can't remember or couldn't care less about. And Jane Austen's Emma Woodhouse gets roundly told off for taking the mickey out of Miss Bates for similar chatter.