Dora Stories

Guess what?

That simple question will now be the target for my unfounded frustrations. Why do we feel the need to start off conversations or stories with questions such as:

· Guess what?

· Did you see that?

· Did you hear about what happened?

Is this really necessary? Now let me make it clear that I have no problem with rhetorical questions. Such as the one I just asked. (Tip: Rhetorical Questions are the kind that the listener is not required to respond to, but if given enough of a pause in between they freak out and answer anyway.) In fact I find rhetorical questions to be quite beneficial in the right settings. What I don’t like is the use of questions that appear to be rhetorical, but are actually not, to start a story. I call these "conditional stories" and they usually go like this:

Person A- Guess what? (Waits for the other person to bite the figurative hook he has just cast at them)

Person 2- What?

Person A- (Got them) I ate a bagel this morning shaped like a square.

Just in case you are not yet grasping the issue I have with this form of story starter, let me paint this same picture again, but this timewith a few changes:

Person A- Guess what? (Waits for the other person to bite the hook thing from the first example)

Person 2- (Silence)

Person A- Guess what? (Repeating himself while wondering why person 2 has not taken the bait)

Person 2- (Silence)

Person A- You're rude!

Ok do you see the issue here? No? I'll break it down for you. Here is the problem with "conditional stories".

1.) In starting your stories with a question that you expect an immediate response to you are leaving it up to the listener to determine the value of your story. As in the second example, if the listener decides they don’t want to hear the story they can choose to not respond. Now what?

2.) By asking "guess what?" you are unfairly requesting the person to guess what you may say next as if they could possibly guess correctly. This leads to

unnecessary embarrassment as the other person randomly guesses what you have to say in hopes that they may be right. Most of the time they are terribly off when you proceed to tell your square bagel story, which they could not possibly have predicted. This also causes you, the one asking the stupid question, to get annoyed at them for guessing incorrectly.

3.) If they respond to the question by just saying “what” that’s all great and well but think about all the brain power being used behind the scenes to muster up the desire to give a reply to a question that requires such a pointless response. Brain power is a terrible thing to waste.

What I am proposing is that we stop forcing our friends and others to make us feel like what we have to say is worth hearing. If you have a story or if you want to strike up a conversation, then just do it. But please stop forcing us to be an active listener, like a child watching Dora the Explorer where every other sentence is a question followed by an uncomfortably long pause waiting for an answer that is not really needed for the show to go on. Do you understand?...                   

...Bueno!

Written By Individual Contributor

Anthony Savage (a.k.a. Analytical Ant)