The Burdens of an Over-Explainer
11 August 2009
I have tendencies toward being an over-explainer. You know, the people who you’re riding with in the car and they’re like, “If you’re wondering why I’m taking this road, it’s because the other day I got caught on the interstate in traffic around this time. And I could have taken such-and-such street, but there’s that round-about that I really hate, and so I decided…” When really you don’t care at all, and in fact hadn’t given it a single thought.
I don’t think I’m quite that bad, but sometimes I really crave making my situation understood. This happened to me last night at my husband’s softball game. It’s our church team, and Ben, my brother-in-law Chris, and my father-in-law all play on the team. (I just had the inclination to explain that my father-in-law doesn’t usually play, but he always keeps score and sometimes plays if they’re short a player. But do you care? No. See what I’m talking about?) All of us girls—my mother-in-law, Chris’s girlfriend, and I—were there to support the team. My very patient mother-in-law had Chris’s puppy, who’s about 4 months old and wants to be on the go all the time. So she’d been walking all over the ball park with him when McKenna decided she wanted Grandma’s attention. So we made a trade, she took over keeping an eye on McKenna, and I had the puppy.
The puppy wasn’t as happy with me. I wasn’t in the mood to indulge walking all over the park. I wanted to sit and watch the game. So after a couple minutes, he started whining, which I ignored. And then he paid me back by peeing all over the cement around my feet. (Though fortunately not on my feet.) I turned to Heidi, Chris’s girlfriend, and said, “Oh gosh, Royal just peed.” Here he’d been walking all over the place for the last twenty minutes, I had him for two, and he peed all over. Heidi and I giggled about it, and all was fine until I heard the women two rows behind us—who were there for the game after ours—say to one another, “That’s really gross that the dog peed.”
And out of my embarrassment, the desire to explain myself struck. I badly wanted to turn around and explain how it wasn’t my dog, that I’d only had him for a few minutes, that there wasn’t a hose around, and so on. Instead, I fought it down and joyfully turned over the leash to my mother-in-law when she and McKenna returned.
I guess this is part of the satisfaction for me in writing novels—lots of time to make situations completely understood. Because what a frustrating part of life it can be.
Hope everyone’s having a great Tuesday!
Comments
Thanks for this post. Intuitively the term over-explainer sums itself up but I did not realize that this was something that was specifically discussed until I seen someone mention it one day. So I looked it up and found your blog. I guess for me over-explaining comes from over-bearing family of my youth who were never pleased with anyone but themselves. Thus I am now an over explainer due to trying to get them to understand why something I did had validity. Hmm… that means that us over-explainers are attempting to be accepted. Well that sucks! Because I no longer care about those from my past but I still carry the over-explaining habit. Who knows maybe I can put it to good use one day.
Posted by An overexlainer on 17 October 2011
I fight this urge all the time. (Go figure, something else we have in common! Probably why our emails border on epics sometimes . . .)
Posted by Roseanna on 12 August 2009