The other day, I was in the copy room at work deeply engrossed in a conversation with myself about why the dumb copier will mix my received faxes in with a print job that a teacher sent from her classroom. I was fully engrossed in the futility and frustration of weeding my fax out of the print job when I heard a voice from seemingly nowhere say, “What was that?” This was startling for two reasons. First, I don’t usually have full, out loud conversations with myself when someone else is in the room. Second, despite clearly hearing a man’s voice, there still didn’t seem to be anyone else in the room. It’s one thing to have an audible conversation with myself, and quite another if my imaginary friends join in. While I was in my brief moment of panic over my psychotic state, a man materialized from the ground behind the far copier. I was so relieved, I could have hugged him. Fortunately, I refrained, since he had already caught me pulling the audible self talk. I can only imagine what he would have thought if I had also embraced him. 

He walked up to me and asked, “Were you talking to me?” I was forced to admit, “No. Before your interruption, I was deeply engrossed in a conversation between me, myself, and I.” He promptly replied, “Most people have such dialogue internally.” As I chuckled, I declared, “I’ll have you know that I read that talking to yourself is a sign of intelligence.” He retorted, “Said the person just caught talking to herself.” I was forced to acquiesce, “Touche!” I liked this guy! He calls a spade a spade. 

It turns out the copier guy is Dave. It also turns out that the seemingly empty copy room is a place that I commonly talk to myself, because he caught me doing it again a couple days later (we were having a lot of copier problems). He said, “I see you haven’t learned to keep your inner dialogue in your head,” as he stood up from under the machine. I calmly replied, “I see you still creep behind the copy machine to spy on innocent victims, simply engaging in audible self talk in an empty room.” Of course he jabbed, “I see you haven’t started ensuring that an empty room is indeed empty.” This guy was good!

I have to say, Dave emboldened me though. Later on the second day he busted me engaging in the audible, I was having a full on conversation with myself in Home Depot about why they don’t carry small flat bottomed storage containers. A container I could put my dizzying array of nail polish in, so they don’t fall all over my linen closet. While I was exclaiming my distress at having to make another stop over at Target to find a suitable container, a woman walked behind me and asked, “I’m sorry, were you talking to me?” Usually, in this situation, I put my hand to my ear and pretend I have a bluetooth device in my ear and I am talking on the phone. But this time, I simply admitted, “No, I am so deeply engrossed in my own conversation with myself, I didn’t realize you were in my aisle so I could shut up and avoid embarrassing myself.” She laughed and said, “I do it too.” To which I responded, “Sign of intelligence, right?” And she exclaimed, “That’s what I’ve heard!” Finally! A kindred spirit!