The Internal Filter

Authors Note: Close friends and spouses are exempt from the filter rule. They endure all sorts of ramblings on a variety of subjects. It’s the quid pro quo factor of these relationships. You know who you are.


One of the things that is nice about being in my forty’s, is life experience. I’ve got a few years under my belt, have seen some things, done some things, grown up a lot (I hope) but most importantly I’ve learned to filter what’s in my brain before it rolls out of my mouth. Part of that filtering process includes the very important question “Is what am I about to say something the listener cares about?”

Disclaimer: I am by no means perfect at verbal filtering. Really. Especially if I have had wine. Or worse. Tequila. Then everything seems really important and you can just sit back and listen to the verbal diarrhea. Trust me; I still manage to wedge my size 8 foot in my mouth more often than I would like to admit.

I am referring mostly about the casual friend, acquaintance or co-worker. You know – someone you see every so often. Someone you’re friendly with but you’re not exactly BFFs. This could be the spouse of one of your friends – the tag-along to the casual friendship. It’s nice, pleasant and cordial but you’re never going to go shoe shopping together. You see where I am going with this, yes?

Some of my good friends (the ones exempt from the pre-emptive filtering rule) and some casual friends get together every few months at a local eatery to indulge in classic over-eating and a little smart talk. This will come across as snarky as all get-out for which I am really not terribly apologetic. Why am I not apologetic? Because, if you had to endure the unfiltered conversation I endured recently, you wouldn’t be apologetic either. Like me, you would be only too happy to have walked away from the whole experience without resorting to jabbing a fork in your eye. Trust me; the fork would have been less painful.

Let me state, the offender in questions is a nice woman. Very young and a little pretentious, which I am sure is a quality she is unaware that is being projected to the whole of the world. Despite being an educated woman (a trait I’ve learned means pretty much nothing in regards to filtering) her internal filter has not matured. She fails to filter on a wide variety of subjects, but mostly on the subject of her dog. She loves her dog. I get it. I am all about pets. I love my pets too. I am the first one to admit I coddle and spoil and treat my pets like children. But I do said coddling in the privacy of my own home. And I really don’t tell people about it because of the “does the listener care” rule. More often than not, I am firmly convinced the listener does not care about my cats. Nor do they care how cute they are, if they like their tummy’s rubbed, the hairball they just gaked up or cuddle time on Sunday mornings. I’m fairly confident that if I waltzed into work each day and began spewing tales about my cats, I would quickly obtain crazy cat lady status and no one would want to have lunch with me ever again.

Oh it can’t be that bad you say? Oh yes. It can. The following is actually unfiltered dog dialogue. Only the name of the dog has been changed to protect the innocent.

Her: “Duke likes it when I change his food. Duke’s eating fish flavored food now. Duke likes fish. He’s a dog.”

Me: Blankly staring

Her: “Duke is 30% dog, 30% cat and 60% rabbit, because Duke likes to jump.”

Me: Eyes glazing over

Her: “Duke weighs 7 ½ pounds. Duke is big for his breed.”

Me: Searching for a length of rope.

Now string all of the unbridled Duke wonderfulness over two hours and you can now appreciate how very torturous it is to endure non-stop unfiltered monologues on Duke, the most amazing pet that ever lived. And while I desperately want to say “Please shut up because even though I think your dog is cute, I don’t really care”, my matured filtering system already knows that yes, the listener in question doesn’t care.