Silence

Last year, my math teacher told me that I was only comfortable when I was talking.
On the first day of sosh, I found out it was true. I felt like the silence was a waste of time. I wanted to talk, to share my day with my friend, to make some noise because keeping my mouth shut was kinda stifling.
Silence, I realized, is overwhelmingly disliked. Part of it is everybody's inner egoiste. Why keep quiet when you can talk about yourself? When you can share your excellent and important opinions? How can you selfishly sit there and keep your thoughts to yourself when everyone else so clearly wants to know exactly what you're thinking exactly when you think it?
This, in turn, makes us impressively bad listeners. When we are so used to talking and thinking exclusively about ourselves, it is a challenge to keep quiet and focus on what the other person is saying. I noticed personally that I have a hard time not interrupting people. I know it's rude, but I can't help it. The words are often out of my mouth before I've even thought about speaking. This, I think, is because of a low respect for silence.
Despite all that, I still think I am better than most at coping with silence. The first day of sosh, I told the class that I hate listening to music. Unusual; most teenagers love music. Listening to music makes me feel stifled and suffocated. I hate noise pollution. I'll never have the TV on or music playing when I'm just sitting at home. It irritates me beyond belief. Quiet calm is far better than always having nonsense disturbing you in the background. Headphones & iPods are the absolute biggest waste of time. They isolate you completely, cut you off so you dont have to talk to anyone or acknowledge anything, and they make me hate you whenever you are using them. The worst is having someone pull out their mp3 player while youre talking to them, or trying to start a conversation while wearing headphones. I just ignore them; it's not like they care what I have to say, they've got headphones in their ears.
Anyway, I am glad for that lesson just for the opportunity it gave me to complain about iPods. It was awkward and informative, especially since it happened on the first day.