diku and I worked for the same company, he in the IT dept, I in the Customer Service department, but I knew most of the guys in IT, so at our company Christmas party I sat at the IT table. One of the guys I didn’t know all that well looked across the table and snided “So, you couldn’t make it into the IT department, eh?”
“No,” I explained, “They told me I had too much personality, so they put me on the phones.”
Even the other IT guys (who’d just been hit with insultary splash damage) applauded that one.
This is from a while ago, but it still sticks in my memory:
It was the first day of a new semester in high school. I am in Trig class and the teacher (Mr. P) has finished going over the course syllabus, grading scale, etc. and there is still ten minutes left in the class period.
Mr. P - I feel like I should say something deep and inspiring to set the tone for the semester.
I spent a week doing an install in Montgomery, AL. All went well, and we had a nice wrap-up lunch with the client before heading to the airport. On the way out of the restaurant, there were a couple of grandmotherly ladies coming. Naturally I stop to hold the door for them.
Lady: It’s nice to see that there are still manners in the South.
Red: Ma’am, I’m from Boston.
When I was in high school many moons ago, my buddy and I had study hall together. Study hall students were mixed in to a regular class, in this case English. While the classs did their thing we were supposed to be studying or doing homework for our other classes. To minimize distractions to his class the teacher sat us on opposite sides of the room. One day my buddy and I were waging a paper war. We would ball up small pieces of paper and, when the teacher turned his back, we would try to peg each other. The teacher turned around just after I had launched a beauty:
Teacher: DJ, what are you throwing?
Me (employing the deny rule combined with the respect gambit): Nothing, Sir!
Teacher: DJ, I saw something from your area go across the classroom, what was it?
Me (now switching to plausible deniability): A fly, Sir!
Teacher (getting angry): DJ, it was white!
Me (moving to full tilt absurdity): Yes, Sir! Albino fly, sir! Very rare - want me to catch it?
It’s amazing how often that same progression kept me out of trouble.
Sort-of a physical comeback, and a cowardly one at that…
Back in high-school, I was at a cottage party, walking along the dock past two jocks. Once of them said “hey, wouldn’t it be funny if we pushed someone in”. The other said “yeah”, and without a moments thought for self preservation, I pushed them in. That’s when the aforementioned self preservation kicked in, and I ran like a motherfuck, and hid in the forest for half an hour.
I never got wailed on for it, so I suspect they never found out it was me.
When my ex and I were still married but on the decline we were at a pub enjoying the music from a local band. It was standing room only and my raging alcoholic ex was tired of holding his beer bottle so he bent to set it on the floor.
He taps my shoulder and points to the bottle on the floor
Ex:Hey, There’s a bottle between us.
**Me: ** * I know, that’s been the problem in our marriage for the last 5 years. *
He was pissed, but speechless. Damn, that felt good.
Not a comeback to an insult, but a perfect response nevertheless…
I called in sick to work one day, with a truly nasty cold. I’d been pretty snotty for a few days, but had progressed to the point where I was hacking up some really fascinating colored rubbery blobs from my lungs.
ring ring ring
Clinic manager: Clinic!
Me: Hi, it’s mixie
Clinic manager: Yo, mixie! What’s up?
Me: My viral load, evidently.
She still chuckles about it, two months later.
I remember we were signing a birthday card at work, and one of my warm-fuzzy colleagues wrote, “Without Music, Life would be a Mistake”, under which I subsequently wrote “Without Cows, Life would be a Missed Steak”.
I’ve had plenty of good comebacks with my wife, but it’s always in my best interest to pretend they never happened…
For this one, it helps to know that my last name is an off-rhyme of “Bob.”
Ninth grade, on the band bus, a couple of people call out my last name, and my best friend cracks “if his parents had had a sense of humor, they would have named him Bob!”
I shot back “if your parents had had a sense of decency, they wouldn’t have had you!” Shocked round of “ooooohh!” on the bus. (Jeff, still love ya, man…)
I was a week away from getting married, and my best man (not Jeff) flew from Taiwan to Pennsylvania to stand by me. After all that traveling he knocked on my door. When I opened it he looked at me, for the first time in more than 4 years, and said “you’ve gained weight!” To which I of course replied “you’re losing your hair.” My wife claims that only men would have this kind of reunion and call it good.
This one just happened recently, with all the rain, mudslides here in California and the tsunami mess in Asia, I was switching the channels between CNN, MSNBC and Foxnews trying to get the latest on what was goin’ on.
I work late nights doing IT working for a company that provides global weather data for various organizations around the world and watching the news when i get home is the first thing I do.
My roommate storms out of his bedroom opens the front door comes back in and heads straight for me to bitch about the weather, but as he tries he accidently spews saliva…before he can say anything or apologize…
Me: Damn, give me the news NOT the weather report.
The one that still makes me smile was a few years ago, when my boss had been on some sort of motivational course and was peppering all his utterances with daft things which were supposed to inspire us all.
I had to give a presentation to the entire company about some huge project our department had been working on for months. It was going very well, until I said something along the lines of
“Based on the results of X, I did …blah blah”, whatever the thing was and my boss said, in a faux jocular fashion
“There’s no ***I *** in team, you know, curly chick. Har har”
To which I replied
“No, and there wasn’t much evidence of u in it, either”
It more or less brought the house down and it stopped him using feeble Managerspeak.
I have three sisters. We’ll call them Natalie, Katherine, and Monica, because I like those names. Monica is not in this story, but I gave her a fake name anyway.
Anyway, on Thanksgiving I went to my mom’s house early to make the sweet potatoes. When I got there, the potatoes had already been cooked and peeled for me so all I had to do was mash them and add my special secret topping.
Sister Natalie says to me, “See, your nice sister cooked and peeled your potatoes for you this morning.”
Well, a few mintha ago my friends and I (who live in the same hall not quite room mates, but close) were doing that “I’ve got a [insert object here]… In my PANTS!” a lot. We had also just watched the episode of Red Vs. Blue, where Doc had just showed up, and had said, “I’m a pacifist.” to which someone else had said, “you’re a thing that babies suck on?” andthe next said “No, you’re thinking of pedophile.” The episode went on from there, but that’s all I need to explain. So the conversation went like this:
Friend: “I’ve got a thing that babies suck on…”
Me: “NO! NO YOU DON’T! You don’t have anything that babies suck on! Any were! Espicialy not in you’re pants!”
Also (not a retort, but still awesome):
[topic of Mario/Mushroom kingdom somehow come up]
Me: “I’ve got a Mushroom kingdom… IN MY PANTS!”
