T.O.L.

I was in the middle of proof reading, which requires complete, unbroken, focus. Out of nowhere I hear my wife blurt out “Why would she ever say that?  Is she kidding?”

“Say what? Who?” I asked.

“Sorry,” she said. “I was thinking out loud.”

Now that could be really frightening if everyone did that, I thought.  A moment later the letter carrier walked in front of my office windows which are very near to the walk. What if he was thinking out loud?  I shuddered a second at that thought and went back to work.               

Then it happened to me. I was reading a line I wrote and I said “No that sounds like crap. What’s that word?  Hmmm.  Fortuitous. That’s it. Not lucky. The fortuitous events that led the chance meeting...”

“What?”  asked the voice from the kitchen.

“TOL.” I said.  “Not important.”

“Huh?”

“TOL,” I repeated. “Thinking out loud.”

I realized that day that I think out loud all the time when I write, and began to wonder if I could even write with my mouth shut. So I decided to try it.  It was as difficult as not biting a life saver until there is nothing left but hole. The self control was causing me face cramps.  TOL was a habit that I developed but fortunately there were no studies linking it to anything worse.  So I decided instead of stopping I would just listen to myself and make mental notes. I actually thought about recording myself but then I would have progressed from disturbed to psychotic, so I stuck to listening to myself, device free.

Here is what I heard. I curse way too much when I TOL. I also use hand gestures simultaneously, as if my slow computer can really see how annoyed I am.  I ask myself questions that I have no answer for.  I tell myself that I am hungry. Actually I tell God I am starving but I don’t mean to. He probably laughs at me. What if God thought out loud? 

  I do actually TOL a few things that help me like reading a run on sentence aloud, slicing it up, reading it out loud again. Or is that ROL?  Hmmm. Not sure. But from now on I am going to post what I TOL on this blog and see if others can relate.  If no one can, I will think that I must be out of my mind – out loud of course.