Vee: I don't think I'm an especially bad conversationalist. I have a large enough cache of multisyllabic words to keep the other person guessing at the very least.
The problem here is, when it comes to James, I get lazy. We've been together for so long and in such proximity that very little happens where both of us aren't involved. So now it takes only a glance -maybe a single word- to convey an entire memory, joke or concept.
This gets so convoluted at times that outside listeners find it impossible to decipher what, if anything, we're even talking about.
My dad is a neuroscientist and said our interactions are getting dangerously close to idioglossia.
I'm not sure why that's dangerous for anybody but Jaime. I suppose it's time to make a concerted effort to actively engage in conversation instead of just pointing to the space between my eyebrow and ear, indicating that time we saw melons at the store that looked a lot like boobs.
The only trouble is, he is very fickle, and if my topic is deemed boring -I would say that accounts for about 98% of what I, personally, find interesting- he'll start reading a book.
It's a little disheartening, really.
Jaime: We're not totally hopeless conversationalists, on the contrary, many a night has been spent endlessly debating the merits of super hero powers or exchanging our views on everyone we know personally and why they're terrible - but, there is a tendency (particularly when in public) to utter little more than grunts.
She keeps insisting that we should learn American Sign Language together, and while I think that would work the majority of the time, I just know that eventually we'll look up from a furtive and offensive signed conversation to find a stranger at the other end of the subway car glaring at us, mouth wide open, a look of terrified indignation on their face...
