Conversation Coach Gifts

'Let's go somewhere noisy, where we can't talk.'

Hey, calm down --- Now, what did you say again?

'Complete sentences?? Jeez, how verbose can you get?'

"Matthew, did we agree to adopt a whale?"

"Harold, you've changed."

"How to talk to people" "Make them rue the day"

"So, what you're telling me is: I have unusually high negatives for a third-year husband..."

Talk shows are great. Listen shows are even better.

'Come on, Walter, you're wasting out time! Stop using complete sentences!'

Nothing to say! Wouldn't wanna hear about it anyway!

'May I suggest a pleasant viognier to put the subtext into gear?'

"Honey, why don’t you tell Tony and Karen about your microdosing-healing-group thingy or whatever the heck it is?"

"Liife! Give my conversation Liife!"

"Let me know when you get tired of berries. We'll work on your people skills."

How to Do Small Talk??!!

'She nitpicks all the time!'

"Stop referring to you and me as 'we'!"

'A 'pregnant pause' is effective only if you've already said something.'

"Go ahead. Tell me your troubles. I promise to say 'Awww' in all the right places."

'Here's another email from a parent, written in lower case with no punctuation and seventeen spelling errors, demanding we do a better job of teaching social skills.'

Foundation for the Syntactically Challenged

"I seem to have forgotten what I was going to say...please...hold the applause!"

'My programmer doesn't understand me.'

"What do you mean, I hardly moved all night? I was constantly dancing around politics, religion and the weather."

Warring parents

"Ambitions. . . To . . . Er. . . Um . . . Become. . . Er. . . Um. . . A. . . Er. . . Um . . . Motivational. . . Er. . . Um. . . Speaker."

"Use your words, Jefferson! Not a roundhouse to the face!"

"The elephant is in the OTHER room. I want to talk about the PENGUIN in the room."

'Thanks to his brilliant conversation techniques, Bob had the shortest calls.'

"You keep everything bottled up inside."

The Art of Bantering!

Eddy's mom suggested that he do his speech on cue cards.

"Wait ... I always thought taking each other for granted was a good thing!"

"Of course I care about how you imagined I thought you perceived I wanted you to feel."

"Look, I'm not denying the validity of your grievances. I just think they'd be better addressed at home, Helen."