I’ve been watching Sue Thomas F.B.Eye. Great, clean show from 2002 with deaf representation! It’s based on the real life of Sue Thomas, a deaf woman who worked for the F.B.I. in the ’70s (and did a LOT of other things — look her up!). She was also a believer.

I’ll have to write about her another time. Today, I’m talking about an observation. While watching Sue Thomas F.B.Eye, I noticed all of the characters would stand around in a rough circle, take turns talking, say something witty or useful, and everyone else would listen intently, with no rushing and no interruptions. This is how so many TV shows portray conversations.

And I realized a few things.

One, my brain operates in that way. I will stand around and wait for my turn to speak in a conversation. I’ll try to inject something witty or useful. And I certainly won’t talk over anyone.

Two, this is definitely not how real conversations work. People are always vying to have the louder voice in a conversation (literally or figuratively). They talk over each other (without being offended?!), interrupt (but somehow people are okay with it?), and you could have one person hog the entire conversation rather than everyone having equal time.

Three….I obviously don’t have statistics for this one! But I would wager that a large percentage of TV shows are made by people who are extraverted and/or “neurotypical”. See, those of us who are introverted or “neurodivergent” (or both!) struggle with the commonly accepted way of conversing. We struggle to know when it’s “our turn” to contribute to a conversation. We would never interrupt someone and are shocked (over and over) when someone doesn’t let us finish talking. We somehow missed out on the “rules” of the conversation game.

So it amazes me that these shows that are made by the extraverted and “neurotypical” population feature these conversations where people are:

• respectful,
• great at listening,
• able to wait their “turn”,
• not willing to interrupt,
• and wanting to give everyone in the conversation circle a voice.

Almost as if they know that conversations flow better that way! They’re telling on themselves! 😉

And yet, the unspoken social rules are unlikely to change, and us “neurodivergents” will continue to have a “disorder” where we don’t understand social norms, while society continues to present to us the social norms that we all really want. Hmm!

What do you think? Do you struggle with conversation? Do you think things should be more like TV? Or do you think it’s not realistic to have conversations like that? Let me know in the comments!

P.S. No hating on either “neurotypicals” or “neurodivergents”. I might poke fun, but that’s all it’s intended to be. No one group of people is responsible for what’s accepted socially. No one group of people is responsible for saying that a struggle with social skills is equivalent to a disorder. These are all much deeper and more complex issues than we can blame one people group for. Be kind!