Talking Speed

I am always being told that I talk really fast. To me it seems like I'm talking at a normal speed, but apparently everyone around me hears it like a sped up version of the rest of the world.

When I speak, I know everything I'm going to say three sentences ahead of my mouth. (Sometimes more depending on how excited or hungry I am.) As a result, I rarely say something that isn't carefully thought through in my mind before it comes out of my mouth.

Last week, I was explaining something about living in a small town to my psychology class and it all came flowing out at what I presumed was a normal speed. After class a couple of my friends informed me  I was talking incredibly fast. Apparently I talk like when you push the a button to jump past what a video game character is saying. It's just out and gone before you have a chance to know what was said. Or it's out and you have to slow down for a moment to catch up.

All throughout high school, I had issues choosing monologues because I would just say them really fast when I performed them. As fast as my speaking is when I'm making it up as I go along, when I've known what I'm going to say for weeks in advance it's even worse. For every play, acting exercise, and just about everything else, I always received the comment of "Sloooooow doooooown!" I finally managed to remedy that by choosing a monologue that was actually required to be recited at hyper speed and got a pretty good grade on it even though everyone commented on how they had no idea what just happened.

Most notable would be from my friend, Mike. "I didn't know what the f--k that was." I didn't know him until a couple weeks after the performance, so I got to hear his comments as an unbiased witness to my insanity.

For my acting class (a class that is slowly attempting to suck my creative soul) we are performing monologues. In college, I seemed to forget my predisposition to talk like an overwound motor and chose a really short monologue to avoid memorizing a bunch of stuff. This proved problematic. When I performed it, I spoke so fast I halved the time. I was done so quickly I had to cut myself because the class was expecting there to be way more.

When I'm having a conversation with people, I usually listen pretty intently (that is if they're actually saying interesting things), but my mind is still plotting my next move. By the time the other person has finished their statement, about three or four actions/sentences have gone through my head. I've analyzed them all and know which one I'd really like to say, but couldn't get away with, which one I'd like to say and may or may not get away with, which one will propel the conversation forward in it's current direction, and which one will make everyone laugh. Depending on my mood I usually pick the latter.

A lot of the time when I say something it comes shooting out of my mouth perfectly fine. Then there are times where it gets super jumbled into a giant ball of syllables and I just stand then stuttering over the letter "I" until I'm forced to slow down while the giant word paper jam sorts itself out. Which is usually when a person who just rips the words free and says the sentence for me.  That's usually my sister and I find it terribly frustrating. I kind of like finishing my own sentences.

When I actually do speak at what I'm told is a normal speed, I feel like I'm speaking way too slow. Like when someone is trying to make sure little kids really get it. I feel slow when I talk at a normal speed especially if I was just told to slow down. And sometimes even then I'm told to slow down more.

While I don't talk a lot, I do talk fast. Maybe that's part of why my mom doesn't think I talk. I just say it all at once and am done until I have something else to say.