Carrie's Corner: The Gift of Gab

Carrie Stambaugh, Managing Editor


By all accounts I have always been a talker. From before I could form proper words, my parents tell me I was gabbing all the time. By the time I learned a few, they knew they were in trouble.
I talked all the time, to anyone, anywhere and about anything that popped into my mind. I talked constantly when I was with someone and to my toys when I was alone, so they tell me. I used to brag to my mother, in the very early morning that “I woke the sun up!”
Everyone that knows me has a favorite story – most of them meant to be embarrassing. My mom has a story about me asking a man at the bus stop why he was black. His answer that God made him that way, she said didn’t really slow me down. I had a dozen more questions about that too. He politely answered them all.
My grandmother’s favorite story is about a time she took me grocery shopping when I was about three or four. Every item that went into the cart, she said, I wanted an explanation. When she plopped in a few bars of soap, I proudly told her I knew what those were for: to wash my mouth out if I said a bad word. Another shopper in the aisle couldn’t hold back her laughter.
My oldest cousin John remembers driving to school in the morning with me chattering to him and Grandma from the back seat. “It isn't fair,” I would whine the whole way to school, “John always gets to sit in the front.” Once we dropped him off, Grandma would offer me the front but I always refused.
By the time I got into school myself, I was talking just as much but even faster. Schoolmates and cousins teased me. They gave me names like “motor mouth” and “Chatty Kathy.” It didn’t shame me. I just kept talking.
Of course, all that jabbering got me into trouble. I spent many recesses in elementary school sitting on the curb because I couldn’t keep my thoughts to myself during class. In middle school I remember penning “I will not talk in Mrs. Wilhem’s class" hundreds of times when I got caught talking with friends.
By junior high, I finally got the knack of shutting up during class. But not anywhere else. The most epic fights my mother and I had during my teenage years were about the time I spent on the phone – or couldn’t spend – talking to my friends. I had lots of friends who didn’t seem to mind my chattiness. Lots of them became my friends because I talked to them.
My parents always say I never met a stranger. I say, I have - they just didn’t remain strangers for long!
It wasn’t until I started working as a journalist in college that I realized that the trait - feeling comfortable enough to talk to everybody - was really a gift. My education just taught me to harness it. I can still talk to anyone, about everything, with no fear of who they are or what they might say in return. And I get paid for it!
The gift of gab has served me well in other ways too. It’s helped me to strengthen the bonds between myself and loved ones. Instead of closing up and refusing to talk about a problem I’m likely to insist on talking it to death!
I also don’t mind listening to my older relatives tell the same story again and again – I always can find new questions. (Someday I’ll be that old person and I’ll want someone to listen too!)
People are hardwired for talking – that’s why we can and other animals can’t! It makes us who we are and it connects us to one another. I suspect that is why I’ll never stop talking…
To chat with Carrie contact her at editor@bridgesmag.com.