Breaking down the boredom blues proves challenging

Sorry, did you say something?

Nobody wants to be the boring person (also known as TBP). You know, the person who is so in love with the sound of his or her own voice he or she can only go a few seconds without hearing it? It’s like a crack addiction. Not that I actually know about crack addictions, other than the countless hours I have spent watching “Intervention.” Anyway, there are a few different categories of these people: the academic bore, the advice fairy and the storyteller.

First, the academic bores. They are hell bent on sharing their sweet nuggets of knowledge with everyone they meet, and nothing says captive audience like the classroom. Unsatisfied with the normal time allowed to respond to a question, they often talk over the instructor or their fellow classmates in an effort to get the coveted last word.

If you are really lucky, they use catch phrases of intellectual -sounding words over and over in an attempt to shock and awe. The only thing that happens is they shock and bore the people listening until everyone in the class looks like victims of a sleep-deprivation study.

You can spot other victims of the academic bore on the way to class by their gallon-sized Starbucks cups. Sadly, many of them have lost their homes, cars and families because of the immense debt they ran up in coffee bills, simply trying to stay awake. It’s a devastating thing.

Their fellow classmates must resort to pulling out their own arm hair in a desperate attempt to stay awake and/or to keep from killing themselves. Unfortunately, many students are casualties every semester. May they rest in peace.

Moving on to the advice fairies. Always there when you are stressed out, they have all the answers. Child rearing? Check. Auto maintenance? Check. Having trouble with a paper? Ding! They once wrote a paper about that very topic, and it was, of course, an A. The advice always seems to be in the form of a passive-aggressive statement about your laziness.

“Oh well, I would have started my paper last summer.”

Lastly, we have the storytellers.

They really want you to know about their wild sides. This (school, job or whatever) is not their only life, you know. They want to regale you with torrid tales and pulse-thumping adventures. What will it be now? Stories of their rock-climbing exploits over Everest? Bow hunting in the Serengeti? Did you hear about the time they canoed down the Yukon, while simultaneously fighting off bears? Wait, I think I’m confusing that story with that Sarah Palin reality-show commercial. Sorry about that. But you get the picture.

What the boring people have in common is they either have no social skills that let them know that people are bored, or else they just don’t care.

For example, they don’t notice when people are feigning death when they start to say, “So did I tell you about the time …” They also miss key boredom signs, such as yawning or the trapped rabbit eyes, as the listener searches for the nearest exit.

When they are spotted in the hallways, boring people don’t think it’s odd that people often hurl themselves out of windows.

I’m not one to present a problem without a solution.

If you can’t run, plan. For example, try to find out well in advance what classes the academic bores are planning on taking next semester. Then, avoid those classes as if your life depended on it. I’m not saying to not take the class if it’s going to affect your graduation. That’s up to you. I’d consider it though.

Avoid their hangouts. For instance, if you know they work at Dairy Queen, I’d give up Blizzards, indefinitely.

When trying to work through the idea for this column, I was talking to a friend at work.  Although I noticed that his eyes began glazing over, I still plunged on. I was almost finished when I saw him looking over my shoulder. That was so rude.

“Come on, Jim, focus,” I said. He looked at me with that semi-suicidal, comatose look, and I knew I had to let him go.

Hey, where are you going?