G will talk to anyone. I'm not saying that people make eye contact, smile, ask his name/age, and start up a conversation. G will walk up to anyone and let loose on his verbal stream of consciousness. Even if they have their backs to him.
Today, in line at the grocery store, G decided to tell some lady about our cats. The cats are his current most-often-discussed topic. We were in the self-serve checkout line. G had just taken ten minutes to scan our 25 or so items meticulously. I was paying for the items, when I hear G start up.
The lady was trying to buy several bags of groceries, plus two enormous bottles of wine. She was holding these two bottles, when she heard a little voice.
"We have two cats."
"Excuse me?" she said.
"We have two cats. They are Hugo and Hermione. (Mind you, if you don't converse often with a six year old who gets excited and trips over words, its all hard to follow. I'm typing this like it was coherent; it wasn't.) Hugo weighs five pounds. Hermione weighs four pounds. They pee and poop in a box. One box is in Mommy and Daddy's room by the bed. One box is downstairs in the basement.. in the room where they stayed when we first got them. I used to use that bathroom, but now the cats use it. Now the cats get to be all over the house."
Bless her, the woman looked at my kid with verbal diarrhea and asked, "Now, tell me. What do they look like?" She just stood there with those two bottles of wine, waiting for someone to come and card her, and took the bait.
We go through this a lot, and I'm not sure about cause or cure. On one hand, his single-minded determination to randomly talk to strangers about a topic that is really only relevant to him is kind of autism-like. Or he just is a kid with ADHD with poor social skills. Or he's just a normal six year old. I don't know if I should cut him off or let him keep going. Older people tend to think he's adorable and don't mind a conversation about cats or Mace Windu or some kid in his class named Tristan. I get worried that he'll eagerly strike up a conversation with a perverted kidnapper about some nonexistent puppy and ride off in a sketchy van. We do discuss stranger danger, but it can be such an abstract topic!
I don't have any good answers. I know I'm not alone in the problems we face or the lack of solutions. I'll just keep telling myself its a phase. Maybe a short one that we will outgrow soon.
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