The Talker

Gossip:  Idle talk about someone's private or personal matters, especially someone not present.

There's a dude at my fitness club that talks a lot.  I mean he really, really, really talks a lot.  He talks too much, in fact.  He's one of those guys that unleashes a torrent of trivia and personal minutia about himself as soon as he sees you, never pausing for air, never engaging anyone else present, a veritable flood of flotsam and jetsam.  I can hear him telling a story in another corner of the locker room, secure in the knowledge that if he sees me he'll repeat the story word for word.  I can also hear him talking loudly, sharing the same information in whatever nook or cranny he next occupies, stupefying some other unwilling victim, no doubt.  I try to avoid him usually although I get along with him just fine.  He's not a jerk - he's boring.

Flotsam:  Debris floating in a river or sea, particularly debris from a shipwreck.
Jetsam:  Articles thrown overboard from a ship or boat in order to lighten the load of a ship in distress.  (Ed. Note: Technically jetsam could very well be flotsam, but never the other way around.)

He recently went to Europe on a tour with another guy I know from the club.  I saw this man in the pool yesterday so I asked him when he got back.  He stopped his lap swimming, took off his goggles, and vented a huge amount of frustration at what a nightmare it was like traveling with The Talker.  I mean he was pissed.  He was incensed.  Personally, I wouldn't have gone with The Talker if you'd paid for my trip so I wasn't surprised to hear the tales that were told.  I have no doubt they were true and unembellished.

"I should have listened to you, David," he sputtered.  (Ed. Note: he calls me different names, cycling back and forth between Seaweed and David most recently.  I used to remind him what my real name was - now I permit him to let it rip.  I find it kind of endearing.  It's a little vacation from myself.)

I gathered from what I could decipher from his broken English that I had intimated that The Talker would be a poor traveling companion.  I am pondering this assertion.  I find it unlikely.  I take great, powerful pains to never talk about another person who isn't present to moderate my thoughts.  Generally speaking, if I wouldn't say it with the person standing right there I don't say it.  Now, granted, sometimes I vent my spleen (Ed. Note: The spleen was once thought to be the organ that was the receptacle of ill humor and melancholy) in a conversation with SuperK or my AA sponsor - we all get annoyed at other people from time to time and we all need to do some spleen-venting about these annoying people who undoubtedly deserve to be the target of my . . . er . . . our ire.  I may have dithered about traveling with someone who I didn't know extremely well - I think the care in selecting a good international traveling companion is right up there with marriage and bondage and long term incarceration vis-a-vis having a good partner.  I'd be more comfortable sharing a jail cell with a murderer for a few years than chancing it on vacation.  

If my cell mate was an asshole I'd figure what can you do?  But if you ruin my vacation . . . well, that's unforgivable.