Maybe you remember Shelob from The Lord of the Rings. If you don’t: Shelob is a gigantic spider-like creature who dwells in a labyrinthine cave in the mountains above Mordor, from which she attacks those who wander by, immobilizes them by injecting a toxin, then wraps them into a thick web. After that, she can eat/drink when she likes. Icky critter, Shelob. If you’re an arachnophobe, may I suggest you skip over the Shelob scenes in Peter Jackson’sThe Return of the King? Jackson is legendarily afraid of spiders and saw to it that the movie version of Shelob would be every bit as horrific as he could make her.
We have Shelobs in our personal lives, and I’m not referring to itsy-bitsy screen spiders in the house or even daddy long legs in the garage. I refer to human Shelobs. What they do is collar you and subject you to an endless ramble from which you can’t escape without being borderline or bonafide rude. They’re boors on steroids, verbal black holes.
I have a Shelob next door. The day he moved in I was walking by his driveway and in a truly bizarre display of overzealous neighborliness he introduced himself with a seemingly endless ramble; tangent upon tangent, backtrack upon backtrack, the whole thing weirdly personal given he had just met me. I just stood there trying to comprehend what was going on with this guy, and why karma had dictated that he would move in next door to me.
He turns out to have a hoarding disorder. Research has revealed that the two behaviors tend to go hand in hand. It’s one of the reasons that folks with hoarding disorders are generally not good candidates for group therapy, given their tendency to overwhelm the proceedings with their endless gush. Some kind of personal limiter is missing, both in their propensity to amass junk and their inability to stop talking once they get started. Their ‘on’ switch works a lot better than their ‘off’ switch.
I put up with it, avoiding him as much as possible. If I got snared I swallowed down increasing irritation while maintaining superficial politeness. Far too many times I resorted to “Oh dear, I think I hear little Pamela crying” gambits to get away from him. He’d just keep on talking. Then I just started walking away. He kept right on talking. I’d exit via the garden gate and he’d still be out there talking. (One of my other neighbors handles the situation by immersing himself in his phone then walking away while intently fixated on the screen.)
But this couldn’t last forever, and recently I lost it and yelled at him that I didn’t want to hear his personal issues. I’ll allow that I shouldn’t have yelled. Nor should I have waited for 8 years of annoyance to build up before biting back. But for the time being I think I’ve stopped the rambles. He’ll be avoiding me for a while—pretty much the same as I tend to avoid him. I can’t do anything about his hoarding disorder beyond throwing up borders via hedges and heightened fencing and the like.
But I can get him to shut up. At least for now.