I have a friend who is traveling in New Zealand on vacation. She posted a picture on Facebook of herself in front of one of the houses in Hobbiton and said how much she loved it. I responded that if she liked it, then she should have put a ring in it. All I got for a once in a lifetime quip was one perfunctory like.
Back in the mid-90s, I was on a business trip in Norway. The office was on a spit of land that jutted out into a lake surrounded by hills. It was in the late Spring and everything was green and beautiful. One day I went for a post-lunch walk with two coworkers. I saw two swans swimming in the lake and I said that they were the ugliest ducks I had ever seen. Instead of the chuckles I was hoping for, or the groans I was expecting, I received two disbelieving stares and an admonishment that those were swans not ducks.
So, this board is heavily populated with smart asses - who else has quips that went unappreciated in the moment?
I was helping with one of my nephew’s after school activities about a month ago. They were having a sort of “field day” and one of the activities was a foot race. Providing encouragement, I yelled to my nephew to “remember back to when you were a sperm; you won that race, you can win this one!” Only one person laughed, and I’m pretty sure it was the drunk guy who was hanging out on the other side of the fence. I’ve not been asked to help out again since then.
Once when I was walking the Vegas strip late at night, a working girl came up to me and said “You know you’ve been looking for me” as her come on line.
I replied “Oh no, I was looking for restitution”. A couple of bystanders half chuckled, the prostitute just walked away.
I thought it was pretty clever for a spur of the moment comeback.
I was discussing the mortality rate in Eastern Europe on a web forum. I mentioned that, judging by the numbers, those Czechs don’t bounce. How many people appreciated my comedic genius? None!
Once we were hosting an event at a hotel my sister-in-law brings her parking receipt to me and says “will you validate me?”
I reply “you look great in that dress, but we aren’t paying for parking”
A friend was asked to be a bridesmaid for a South Asian woman, and was asked to wear Indian dress. She was telling me about the difficulties she was having making herself understood in the dress shop. For once in my life, my wit was fired with a short fuse; I promptly said, “Sometimes ‘sari’ seems to be the hardest word.”
She didn’t appreciate the quip. I mean, she got it; but she groaned in pain.
But the OP didn’t write “put a ring on it”. He wrote “put a ring IN it”. I would have least have understood that although why it was said about a house was beyond me. Now if you said it about a car, that’s different. Cars are worthy of lust and many women have bemoaned about their husbands paying more attention to the car then them.
