I have a series of posts on the kinds of friends you may have. All of these are pulled, in bits and pieces, from friends and people I’ve interacted with. Other posts in this series.

You’re on a phone call. You are quite obviously on a phone call talking to someone else. Your friend comes in the door, seeing this, they ask you a question. You assume it’s important, so you briefly put the conversation on mute while you hear their question quickly. Their question turns into three or four follow-up questions. You don’t want to be rude, but you also don’t want to leave the person on the phone hanging.

The situation overall had an awkward outcome and you feel like you let both your friend on the phone down and your friend asking the questions.

Later that day, as you’re eating dinner with a bunch of friends, someone says something about the ultimate frisbee game you just played, and the same friend who had the question while you were on the phone says some odd quote that they heard earlier that day.

This friend has many positive characteristics. They seem to be great at thinking up ideas. Some practical, many not. They have a melancholy yet thorough way of thinking through problems and issues that are clouding many other’s judgments. They experienced a fair amount but it takes them quite a while to process all they see around them and formulate their plan of action from that.

They’re an interesting individual because they may be the quickest, most athletic person when you’re playing a sport, but when it comes to conversational skills, it seems that for whatever reason, they take about 3 times longer than the average person to respond back or think up another question.

It’s not that they don’t hear you when you ask a question, but you may have to give them time to comprehend what you’ve said so that they can think of their question in return.

Some of the smartest people are what some might consider “slow” or “off in their own world”. As they’re off in their own world, don’t be surprised if they’re creating something amazing in that world you don’t get to see.