Don't interrupt me

Just shut up.

Not forever. Not as a rule. Just as an occasional courtesy. Consider it a conversational exercise. Take those flapping, meaty lips of yours, those clicking teeth and your grunting throat, and make them still, just for a three-count.

Take a breath. Consider your next blurt, before you blurt it. Hey, while you're at it, take a real chance and listen to what I have to say for a change, you monopolizing boor.

By now it goes without saying that I don't like being interrupted. To tell the truth, I actually enjoy a conversation so energized that one conversant will excitedly interject something before the brainwaves lap against his mind's shore and obliterate the elusive thought written in mental sand. I dig that.

What I don't like is when I can't get an entire sentence out of my mouth before I am cut off, time after time, until I find myself at the end of a "conversation" without having completed a thought. It assumes I have nothing useful to contribute. It assumes your thoughts are the only ones that matter. It assumes I won't flick out my knuckles and rap you one in your relentlessly-vibrating throat, just to listen to the comparative silence between your ragged wheezing.

So, take a quiet breath. Smile and nod, even if I go on a bit. It's the polite thing to do. I'll shut up eventually, and it'll be your turn.