I hate talking on the phone. I can’t remember my pre-cellular phone days, but I know that as a teenager I had my own phone line and I used it liberally. I don’t know when my hatred for phone talking started, but by the turn of the century, I remember being very uncomfortable answering the phone.
Most people know this about me and I make my way through the world largely using text and email. I prefer to make appointments online or by text, and I will choose to support a business based solely on their ability to provide me with an experience absent interaction with humans.
I need to tell my whole story here someday, but the short story is that I was adopted as an infant and I met my birth family in my early 30s. Today, at 45, my biological family is all the kin I have left in the world. My adopted parents have died and the rest of the family rejected me after that. I love my biological family and I feel much more like myself with them than I ever did in my adopted family. There is just one tiny problem – everyone on my dad’s side of the family talks on the phone. I know. It surprised me too. I quickly realized that I don’t have the faintest idea how to carry on a conversation. I ask the same questions over and over, I make stupid remarks that don’t need to be said to fill the void, and worst of all, I feel like a failure when I hang up the phone. I want my family to know I love them, but these calls stress me out. My little brother calls me from jail every day, and our conversations are so boring because he does the same things every day and I’m sick every day.
My biological family on my mother’s side is much more like me in this regard. I sense that we all fall somewhere on the neurodivergent spectrum, and all four of us prefer textual-based communication for efficient and clear communication.
I have bookmarked a couple of websites with lists of questions to ask or topics to raise while on a call, but I don’t memorize them, and I find pulling them up during the call starts with me being a bad listener and ends in clumsy conversation.
I thought to write about this because I’m sure other people have this problem and I was hoping to get suggestions, but no one reads my blog anyway! I think I’ll make a conversation “cheat sheet” and keep one in my wallet and one in my nightstand. If anyone runs across this post and has suggestions for how to be better at conversation, I’m all ears. If I find a good solution, I’ll update this post.