You guys remember the blog I wrote about self-talking? If not, here is the link so you can check it out. We have another type of talker I want to talk about today: the repeat talker.

Do you know anybody who is a repeat talker? Every time you talk to them on the phone or go out with them, they talk about the same things and tell the same stories over and over and over again.

It’s funny. You’ll go out with them, and they’ll bring up the same story about something that they did last summer, last Christmas or last football season. It might be a story about something that happened during their childhood.

Whatever it is, it seems like they never remember what they’ve ever said to you before that moment. I don’t know if they have a poor memory or if they are very limited in how far their conversational skills can go.

My Father was a repeat talker. Whenever we’d go out, he’d always repeat the same things over and over again. My brother and I would sit there, start to laugh and say, “Cue the Jay Levine story” or “Cue the Jets game story.” It’s like my Father found a way to tell the same four stories every time we were with him — at every single dinner that we had with him, at every lunch, and at the beginning of every football season.

He would always repeat the same stories. That is not what is called tradition. It is just a poor memory. There are just people who repeat the same things over and over again.

Instead of sitting there listening and pretending you’ve never heard it before (because you don’t want to be rude), whenever a repeat talker starts to tell one of their stories you almost want to let them know you’ve heard the story before and don’t want to hear it again. You almost want to say, “You know you’ve told me this story about 7,000 times. Let me tell you the beginning, the middle and the end of it.”

It is almost like repeat talkers are just limited in the amount of things they have to talk about with people. They are limited in their ability to connect with people (which I know through my Father).

They are limited in their ability to connect with people, so they only talk about what’s safe to them. What’s safe to them are the same stories they’ve been talking about over and over and over again.

Have any of you ever been around a repeat talker, or are you one yourself? I’d like to hear from all of you today about this.