Well, yesterday was Halloween and tomorrow is Election Day, and I don’t know which is scarier.
Anyway, Halloween put me to mind of vampires. No, not the kind that they show in the movies, but the kind that you run into day after day, probably without knowing it, most of the time.
I used to have a friend. I’ll call her Madame X. Madame X was one of the sweetest people I ever met. She seemed to be sympathetic, caring, and kind. She was intelligent and quick-witted. As a matter of fact, I had no complaints with Madame X until I noticed a tiny little problem: She had a tendency, once given an opening, to hold the floor endlessly. I was amazed by the sheer volume of her monologues. They could go on and on for so long – and there was never any question or pause included in her speech, so there was no way for me to respond. The best I could do was to interject such utterances as, “Is that so?!” and “Oh, my!” and “Wow!” and “Hmmmm” and “I see.” I would do this to remind her that I was there. At first I thought my friend was just a little lonely and in need of a sympathetic ear. But after a while, it sank in. This was her way of relating. She really wasn’t interested in hearing from the other side of the table. On the contrary.
I began to notice my reaction to this. We would be at a restaurant for a pleasant lunch, and after three minutes of the preliminaries, “Hi-how-are-you?” and “Fine-How-are-you?”, she was off and running. Two hours later, I would find myself nearly comatose, falling asleep in my capuccino, drained, unable to move, and dying to be somewhere – anywhere- other than where I was. I was ruined for the day, incapable of any meaningful activity.
Finally, I had to separate myself from Madame X once and for all. It was difficult and painful, and I did it with a heavy heart, not wanting to hurt her, but not knowing any other way to protect myself.
I wouldn’t bother to tell you about Madame X, except that she is only one example among many I have experienced in my life. I’m not sure whether the explanation is that the “vampire” is secretly angry (thus explaining the sensation of having been attacked after having endured one of these marathons) or whether she is simply depressed and needs to “spill” for relief. Both of these explanations seem plausible to me. But they don’t change the outcome.
The thing about vampires is that you have to run from them. Run like hell. In the end, it doesn’t matter whether a vampire is really good at heart. Allow yourself a smidgeon of rudeness. Make something up. Say you suddenly have a headache. Say you hear your mother calling. Say you just remembered you had a dentist’s appointment. Anything.
Oh, one or two encounters now and then with a vampire might just leave you a quart or two low temporarily, but a quart here, a quart there, and pretty soon you’re drained dry.
Well, on to Election Day. (Clearly, the scarier of the two days). Don’t forget to vote!