Can I speak now?

I don't know if this happens a lot to other people, but I keep getting cut off mid-sentence.

I don't mean while I'm on the phone, but just when I'm talking. I'll start a sentence, and about three words in someone else will start talking and all attention turns to that person. It's not really a confidence booster. Maybe I talk too quietly, or I'm not assertive enough. Maybe I'm just boring. I don't know. But I like to think that if someone is saying something to me, I listen to what they are saying, and wait until they finish before responding. It's possible I don't do that in practice. A few days ago I had to try four times before I got the whole sentence out. It wasn't anything earth-shattering, but I'd still like to be listened to when I'm talking.

Perhaps in these days of multi-media and instant information, it's harder for people to concentrate on one thing. Perhaps as a society we are losing the art of being able to listen, let alone the art of conversation. I know I'm not very good at arguing. I can express myself far more clearly if I can ponder over a position and respond at a later date. Is this the first sign? Having said that, I've not always been very good at conversation anyway. It's only been in my later years that I've come out of my shell and started talking to people, rather than sitting and listening. But being interrupted just pushes me back to the quiet old days. Today when it happened and I got cut off, I just didn't bother trying again. No-one seemed to notice, so here I am. Expressing my not quite anonymous voice to all and sundry, or perhaps to no-one at all.

It occurs to me that this sort of thing can go some way to explaining why people find comfort in chat rooms, or blogs, or just emailing friends rather than talking to them on the phone or in person. It's harder to be cut off, and even if there is no-one there, you can get closer to fully expressing a thought, or a feeling, without fear of being interrupted and made to feel like what you are trying to express isn't important (although I know that's rarely the intention). Perhaps the loss of social graces is a vicious circle. People express themselves less, leading to others becoming less interested and cutting them off, leading to people not bothering to try and express themselves.

I hope I'm over-reacting. But I know I'll work harder to really listen to what people are saying to me, to give them my undivided attention.

We all deserve to be listened to.

What's all this shouting?

I don't have very good selective attention.

Although there are times when I can focus on one thing and ignore everything else, there are also times when I can't. I have particular trouble with sound. There are just some noises that I can't filter out, and that annoys the hell out of me. For instance, the sound of someone crunching their way through a bag of crisps (potato chips for those outside the UK). More often than not, that sound cuts through me like a knife. Transpose that noise into a fairly quiet location, and it becomes worse. A cinema for example. There are few things that wind me up as much as someone crunching through a movie. It's like that person has decided that the soundtrack has something missing, and chooses to add a 'crunch track'. Because as everybody knows, nothing heightens tension like the sound of someone eating. Nothing quite so evocative as the munch of popcorn.

The assumption (whether conscious or not) seems to be that the sound of the film isn't as important as the visual aspect - demonstrated by the fact that someone who stood up blocking part of the screen might not survive until the end of the film. I'm a fan of movie soundtracks. Not necessarily just the music, but the ambient noises, the talking, the sound effects. Someone has put a lot of effort into this for my entertainment, and I won't belittle their work by not listening. And I object to not being able to fully appreciate their work because someone in the cinema fancies a snack.

I know. I'm 'highly strung'. I freely admit it. It's not at all annoying to me when I'm eating crisps. People are not being malicious by choosing to eat the noisiest foods known to man. And although I would like the whole world to revolve around me, I'm grown up enough to know it's not going to happen. But I never understood why cinemas, whose job it is to show movies for my gratification, started selling snack foods that made so much noise. That is until I was told it was the concessions that make cinemas their money, not just the ticket sales. Then it all became clear. Capitalism at work. Fabulous. Guess why I prefer watching DVDs in the quiet of my own home...

I guess everyone has a sense they rely on, or appreciate, more than the others. Mine would be sound. Music, talking, the sound of the sea, or a river flowing by. If a picture paints a thousand words, to me a sound evokes a thousand images. It's just the way I was put together. And I only wish I could change that every now and then...