I think part of it is that the older you get, the more smartass things you think of to say. But more than that, it's that you find yourself more and more in situations where you can't just blurt out whatever happens to cross your mind.

 

It's probably the only good thing about getting really really old, that you don't have to worry about stuff like that and you can just tell anyone anything you want, and if they happen to call you on it you can act like you don't remember it.

 

I need to use the filters a  lot these days, and not just because I'm looking for a job. Although interviews and phone calls are bad enough, always trying to say just exactly the right thing in exactly the right way can be worse. It sucks sometimes, but it's not what I'm talking about.

 

I'm talking about social situations where you meet people whom you find to be extraordinarily obnoxious, but for whatever reason can't let them know. Like maybe this is a friend of a friend and you don't want to offend them, for fear that you offend the person who really is your friend. Or maybe he or she is an old friend of your family and whatever you say is immediately going to get back to everyone you're even remotely kin to.

 

Actually, there's two kinds of people like this. One is completely oblivious and wouldn't know how obnoxious they are if you spelled it out for them.

 

They laugh too loud, and at all the wrong times. When  they're telling you something that they think is funny, they talk loud, but right when they get to the punchline (or what they think of as the punchline), they get really loud and they speed up, like "....and so I was sitting there andthenIrealizedtherewasn'tanytoiletpaper!!!"

 

They have no sense of personal space, or should I say, they have no sense of my personal space.

 

And if you shy away of try to ignore them, they come right back, louder than ever.

 

Then there's the other kind. The exact opposite kind, who are just as loud and just as obnoxious, but completely meltdown whenever you even hint that he or she is not the funniest and most charismatic person in the history of the universe. I know two or three guys like this, and I guarantee you that if they ever read this, they're going to be so absolutely sure that I'm talking about them, they're going to take it as a personal attack.

 

And if I really wanted to be a jerk, I could act like I really am talking about a specific person and then just say "He knows who he is." Then they'll all be paranoid and pissy.

 

In a way this is kind of what separates us from the animals. You never really see an animal get annoyed and then have to pretend that they're not annoyed. Usually when animals gets annoyed, they just try to eat one another. They don't try to laugh it off, or flinch and hope the other animal goes away.

 

Animals don't really flinch.

 

Like, I've been rear-ended four times my whole life, three of them in the last year. It's like there's some magnetic force in my rear bumper that attracts the front bumpers of other cars. The last time it happened, this teenage girl rear-ended me, just a tap really, and I got out of the car to see if everyone was ok, and she just started crying hysterically. I just felt so bad that I spent 10 minutes trying to tell her that everything was ok. Which was, like, weird. And awkward. And it occurs to me now that she might have been the slightest bit manipulative. But whatever.

 

The point is that now, I stop at red lights, and if a car pulls up behind me, I flinch. It's kind of like when you take a big swig of milk that turns out to be sour, you're afraid to drink milk for a month.

 

So, while other people have these paralyzing phobias of dogs or heights or small spaces, I get these really annoying ones like fear of cars behind me, or sour milk.

 

Now, you probably think I've gotten way off-track here, but I haven't. Because this flinch that I do at four-way stops, or my hesitation to drink milk, is exactly how I am with the annoying people who talk too loud.

 

It's like this. They may be nice, and rational, and even humorous at times, but if they're grabbing my arm when they talk to me and laughing too loud at things that aren't even funny, I'm going to activate this little thing in my brain that tells me to avoid them at all costs, and for the love of God don't laugh along with them, even just to be polite, because then you're "in on it".

 

Ok, I'm done.