Another long night last night unfortunately, with a good bit on my mind in work and life in general.  I headed to the basement sofa around 2:00 and found the 1968 version of “Planet of the Apes.”

Linda Harrison was the love interest of Charlton Heston (Taylor) in the film, and I saw the movie fairly early on (when their spaceship was in the lake).  I didn’t recall the early part of the movie for some reason, and I was sucked in for most of it (I ended up falling asleep after Taylor was speaking with Dr. Zaius.

The above clip was the famous scene where Taylor speaks in the midst of the apes for the first time, with the great line, “Take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!”  After a long Google chat session with one of my soccer mom’s, it got me thinking that I’ve lost alot of the my ability to speak and have a conversation.

I’m a terrific presenter and speaker, having addressed a maximum crowd of a few thousand on some topic before.  I grew up as a fairly chatty guy when I was with people, full of confidence and unafraid to strike up a conversation with strangers.

Somewhere in the last few years, I’m simply stopped speaking words very much.  I prefer to communicate via email or these posts, don’t make very many phone calls, don’t create the opportunity to make presentations or speaking engagements.  I have conversations with my wife and our boys, but I’m guessing I speak out loud less than 5,000 words a day.  It may be closer to 1,000 actually (an interesting experiment).

Is this common?  This is no great epiphany on the state of humanity, as others have already spoken quite elegantly on the subject (see Bruce Schneier among others).  But what has this done to me on a personal basis?  Am I lesser because I don’t speak?  Are there long-term impacts to me?

Unclear, but I’d be very interested in the thoughts of others.  btw, the last scene in “Planet of the Apes.”