Frumpy Middle-aged Mom: Blabbermouths have more fun. It’s a fact.

Are you a blabbermouth like me? I’m one of those people who can’t help yakking everywhere I go.

Standing in line at the grocery store, getting on the bus, waiting for my chai latte, getting checked out at Target, buying a movie ticket. If I see someone with a T-shirt from a place I recognize, or a particularly cute dress, I’m the one who’s going to strike up a conversation. If it’s ridiculously hot and I feel sympathy for the perspiring checkout clerk, I’m going to mention it.

“Wow, I see from your T-shirt that you’re from Seal Beach. What are you doing in Cairo, Egypt?” I remember one encounter started out, causing my kids  to yet again roll their eyes and move slowly away from me.

This was right after I’d been mortified by an assault-rifle-toting security guard who didn’t speak English pulling a box of Tampax out of my backpack and demanding loudly and gruffly to know, “What this?” to the secret amusement of everyone else in line behind me, including Seal Beach man. People were shaking with suppressed laughter, and I didn’t blame them, but I really, really just had a hard time miming how the product was used. Sadly, I didn’t speak Arabic.

Afterward, to dissolve the memories of that encounter, I chatted to Seal Beach T-shirt guy and his wife for a few minutes while we waited to board the plane. They politely pretended they hadn’t seen the encounter.

Later, my kids berated me. “Why do you always have to talk to people?” they demanded and continue to demand today. This is in the present tense because it’s an ongoing discussion, as they explain to me how annoying it is to them that I engage with my Fellow Man.

Well, ponder this:  A 2013 study by researchers Elizabeth Dunn and Gillian M. Sandstrom at the University of British Columbia found that people actually became happier when they chatted with folks like the barista at Starbucks or the checkout clerk at a store. Obviously, there was a slight decrease in efficiency, but an increase in a sense of community and general well-being.

And, a 2018 study published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Resarch found that daily pleasant social interactions actually tended to lower blood pressure.

This is one reason why it’s better not to be on your phone every second you’re out and about. Speaking of which, I was in the hot tub at the gym last night with a guy who was talking to his girlfriend on Facetime while we were in the water. He seemed amiable, so I didn’t do what I wanted, which was to tell him sharply, “I don’t want your girlfriend, where ever she is, looking at me in my bathing suit at the gym! Use some discretion, dude!” And, really. That can’t be good for your phone. But, I digress.

Nowadays, I find people talk to me, especially because I’m going through chemotherapy and have lost my hair. When I want to be incognito, sort of anyway,  I wear my wig. Then I look like a chubby regular person. But when I don’t feel like putting it on and just wear a scarf instead, people make a point of coming up to talk to me, because it’s like wearing a big sign around your neck that says,  “Yes, I have cancer.”

I was sitting in the lobby of the Mission Inn in Riverside recently, waiting for my friend to check us out, and the woman next to me turned and said, “My mom had cancer and she’s doing great now.” It’s funny how this being-bald-thing elicits personal confidences from total strangers.

I was happy to chat with her, though the people who start out that way and then end with, “And then she died” leave me shaking my head with wonder. What exactly was the reason you told me that story?

Now, don’t send me ticked-off emails complaining about people who delay everyone behind them in line at the store, because one person won’t stop yakking to the cashier. I am conscious of people behind me and you should be, too. Don’t be rude. However, that doesn’t mean you can’t compliment someone’s glasses. That only takes a minute.

Actually the only place I don’t talk to people is on airplanes. I don’t want them to feel they are trapped for hours next to a Chatty Cathy who won’t shut up. Been there, done that.  I wait for them to talk to me and that if they say something interesting, I chat. If they just want to tell me about their recent surgery and show me unsolicited pictures of their grandchildren, I turn over and go to sleep.

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