sbcmetroguy wrote:
Friend, I rehearse conversations all the time. I also go back over conversations often as well, inserting what I believe might have sounded better at the time. I'm not a quick-witted person, I do not think fast on my feet, so I often say things that I think sound stupid. Sometimes I even think up conversations which may never happen, but if I am thinking about a particular person or situation, I might start acting as if I'm having a conversation with someone. Usually I do all this when I'm in the bathroom or the shower, and often while driving in my car as well.
Ditto on nearly every point. Wow. I rehearse a lot of conversations in my head, but I do it more as a kind of practice rather than a true rehearsal since I often have no control over where actual conversations will go. I spend quite a bit of time analyzing conversations I've had to see what worked and what didn't. I think I can think fairly fast on my feet, but I think that's mostly due to my experience watching movies, TV, and reading books which provides me a pretty good resevoir of material to pull from (most of my clever remarks I've heard elsewhere before, but no one seems to notice it and think I'm being creative...don't tell them my secret!
). I will say that if something happens that I just didn't expect or something comes up that's nowhere near what I rehearsed I tend to freeze up, stammer, and stare at my feet. Oh, and I also tend to have imaginary conversations with people I am thinking about, though for me it's almost always in the car.
Now, answering machines...whole other story! Once in a while I rehearse messages I might leave on an answering machine/voicemail if I think that's a likely possibility, but I don't do it anywhere near as much as regular conversations. When I rehearse them I tend to sound somewhat robotic (I think) and when I don't rehearse them I feel like I'm not expressing my thoughts as coherently as I'd like, making me feel like I just lost several IQ points in the process.