Name droppers

I recently had the opportunity to meet a couple of brothers who seemed to, between them, know every famous person in the world, most of whom I'd never heard of, so it was hard to be impressed. Still, dinner with Kissinger does sound quite cool. Although I thought he was dead. I'm not sure about Nixon being a 'nice guy', but who am I to judge? I've never met him.

The stream of name dropping quickly grew quite tedious and I wondered why these men felt compelled to do this in such a compulsive way. Do they really think ordinary lives are so dull that others will only be interested if you can pepper your conversation with celebrities? It ended up making them look rather sad and pathetic, as if their lives were so empty they could only get off on the backs of other people. Actually, they'd both had quite interesting lives without having to mention anyone well known.

Or maybe it annoyed me because they didn't ask me any questions about my life? I mean, I'm not a bad listener, but this was not conversation, it was a monologue. I can handle Alan Bennett's monologues, but that's about it.

Or, even worse, maybe I resented the fact it brought out a side of me which wanted to compete by listing any encounter I've had with anyone vaguely well known, thereby lowering myself to their level.