That reminds me of this other thing I said to T once. Before he got his laptop, he had a desktop computer, so he would often start our sessions with him still sitting at his desk, doing email, and I would be over in the sitting area, waiting for him to join me. Usually he just spends a couple of minutes wrapping up correspondence and then comes to where I'm sitting. But sometimes he tries to start our sessions while doing email and calling over his shoulder to me with random comments--"so how have you been?", "what's new?", etc. But it is just these token questions. He really isn't listening to me or wanting to start a discussion. Because I have tried answering these questions, and he is so caught up in his email, that he doesn't hear what I say and then says "what? what?" And if he were sitting with me, he would never say "how have you been?" because he doesn't ask that kind of thing. So I got to the point where I would not respond to his questions when he was at his computer, since he didn't want to hear my replies. I would just wait until he was done and could join me. But one day, he said to me from his computer, "what happens next?", referring to an ongoing issue for me. This is how I answered, with a very patient tone of voice, "what happens next is you finish on your computer, come sit down with me over here, and we do therapy." He kind of barked out a laugh, but yeah, I think he got the message! He finished up pretty quickly and joined me. Therapists!