Rules of Disengagement

The other night Frank, Leo and I were out at dinner and a woman, sitting at a table behind us, asked one simple question about Leo. I answered. She made a comment about how cute he was. I thanked her. And somewhere along the way I got caught listening to a 20 minute monologue about her life. She told me:

All about her family: her kids, her grandkids, her sons-in-law and daughters-in-law
Her thoughts on raising children
About several tragedies that had happened in her life
Her medical history
All the places she’s lived and where she plans to live

My neck started hurting, I was turning towards her for so long. Finally, when our food came I said, “Well, it was nice talking to you” and turned to my table. This didn’t stop her. And so the stories continued.

I’m not sure what kind of vibe I’m giving off but this happens to me a lot. I can’t get away from chatter boxes. You think I talk a lot? No way. I believe that I can tell if someone is getting bored of a story and I will either speed it up or end it. And I always give someone an out before I start: “Are you busy or do you have time to hear this?”

Not these people.

And the worst offenders? The service-industry—pest control, plumbers, roofers…I can’t get them to leave! It’s story after story. I can only nod and smile for so long!

On Monday I met with an electrician:

Him: “How do you spell mechanical?”
Me (after spelling it for him): “And you can trust me because I’m a writer.”
(Pause: Okay, I see how that could beg the question about my writing but it didn’t…it gave him an outlet for talking about another writer.)
Him: I met with a writer the other day…her name was blah blah. She wrote a book about blah blah…and then she wrote another book about blah blah PORN blah blah STRIPPER…
(And as you can see, the subject matter wasn’t even all that appropriate for a discussion between electrician and customer).

And yesterday with the roofer:
Me: I have to leave soon because I teach a spin class.
Him: Spin? Oh, I thought you said swim. I know a lady who teaches swim lessons and blah blah blah…
(Dude, did you miss the part when I said I had to leave soon?)

I complained to my dad about this problem and he said I need to learn how to “disengage.” Here’s what I currently do: “Well, I’ll let you go because…” and I put it on them. But that’s not working because let’s say I tell the roofer, “I’ll let you go because I know you’ve got other roofs to attend to,” he could say, “Oh, no. I don’t have any more appointments for the rest of the day.”

So I need some good catch phrases to help me get out of these filibusters. And they need to be vague so as not to bring up another subject. For instance, I could say:

Wow, is it 4:00 already? I gotta go!

But I couldn’t say:

Wow, is it 4:00 already? I gotta go to taekwondo class!

Because that would inevitably get the person to tell me about their brother-in-law who started a karate studio and how it got broken into and all they stole were the trophies.

If you have any other helpful breakaway phrases, I’d love to hear them. In the meantime I’m just going with, “Do I look like I care?” Because really, I’d like to know the answer to that.