TMI

How much personal information do you share with friends, family or simple acquaintances? I ask because things are often quiet around the house because Tina and I are fairly conscious about information that we share. We have to be. Nothing is sacred to my stepfather and sometimes I suspect that my mother has a hard time keeping things to herself as well.
It is very upsetting to Tina and I to share personal experiences with my parents, whether it be our financial worries, illnesses or issues in the workplace, only to be questioned about it by other, more removed family members or even the neighbors, who we don’t know. It has happened before and would continue to happen if she and I hadn’t just decided to clam up and stop sharing. That makes things awkward around the house though because we just don’t do small talk.
Luckily for my parents, they have my sister, the Queen of the drama queens. She doesn’t mind sharing her and her husband’s personal matters either. As a matter of fact, I think she discusses their personal issues with my parents more than she discusses them with John, her husband. It is great that she has an outlet for her frustrations but I think the reason that she continues to have the same problems is because she discusses them with everyone but the person she needs to.
If it isn’t bad enough that she shares her marital affairs with other people, once my stepfather gets off the phone with my sister, he can’t wait to share whatever she has told him with anyone who will listen. The moment he hangs up the phone with her he either starts telling us about it or picks up the phone and starts calling other family members. Telling family may not be that bad but he doesn’t stop there. I’ve heard him telling the neighbors and just last week he was on the phone with a doctor’s office trying to schedule an appointment for a colonoscopy (I’ll get to that in a minute) and he was telling the receptionist about it. I can’t explain why he does it but it would piss me off to no end if I found out that he was spreading personal information that Tina and I had given him around like that.
We are just naturally suspicious people though. Tina thinks that the people who put those little sports stickers with their kid’s name and number are stupid. There are too many perverts out there to just advertise your kid’s names like that. We shred any and all mail with our names on it whereas my parents just throw it away without even so much a tearing it up.
Now on to the colonoscopy. Right up there on my list of things not to base a conversation on, along with personal information and small talk, is bodily functions. I don’t want to hear about bowel movements and menstrual flow. Keep it to yourself. It might be natural but that doesn’t make it any less gross or inappropriate.
Thursday was the day of the big event so my step dad had to spend Wednesday drinking all kinds of stuff to “clean him out.” I got to hear all about it, too. As I was making my gourmet lunch, a grilled cheese sandwich, he started telling me what the medication was for, as if the boldly printed Bowel Preparation Kit on the box wasn’t descriptive enough. A little while later, after I had retired to my room to escape his “noises” and read, he came to my door to tell me that he thought the medication was starting to work and if I needed him he would be on the pot.
That afternoon, when my mother got home from work, she asked me how many times he had moved his bowels that day. At that point I had had enough and told her that his movements were personal and not appropriate conversational pieces. That was when he yelled, from the comfort of the toilet, for her to come and say hi to him. To which she responded by walking towards the bathroom asking him how much he had shit so far that day. What is wrong with people?
There is a such thing as Too Much Information, you know.