A lot of my older relatives do this, and it’s best just to let them continue. Or if you’re in a hurry. Try to quickly interject something like, “Oh yeah, I remember you telling me about that, but we really have to get going, we’ll chat about it again later. Bye Aunt Mollie.”
I’ve had a couple of friends that were like that. One of them always told the same stories about certain landmarks that we would pass on a driving trip. You just couldn’t stop her without hurting her feelings and it really wasn’t hurting me to listen to it again. I knew she enjoyed telling the stories so I just let her. Did it irritate me? Yes. But I never wanted to hurt her feelings, so I just grew more patient.
With a particular co-worker, after putting up with it for years (and not minding as much as other people in our company who would literally walk away when they saw her in the lunch room) I would indulge her with mmm-hmmms and oh’s. But after awhile, her stories started to actually impede on my time. So then I started to say, “Oh my God, Renee! I am so sorry, I forgot that Ron told me to be in his office at 1:00! (while looking frantically at my watch) I better go, but make sure you tell me the rest of what happened after work OK!” I usually didn’t see her after work, because we left at different times, so that helped a little bit, but made her feel like I was still interested.