Sometimes it results from a jab. Sometimes a flirt. Sometimes a downright insult.
The retort can strike you within minutes. Most often it pops into your head several hours later. Every now and then the whole scene replays itself with your witty reply inserted about a week later. You never even knew you were thinking about it.
The universal truth is: It’s always too late.
We all have a million of 'em. I can never remember more than the last one or two. Anyway, here’s mine from today.
I was on the phone with a very nice young lady whom I’ve been dealing with for a few weeks now. We were discussing a product made by a company called Cherry. They are notorious for extremely long lead times on product.
Me: Well, if they have it stock, about a week or two. If not, you are looking at a lead time of at least 3 months. I’m not joking, they are really difficult to work with. Her: So are you saying that Cherry is a pain to deal with? Me: Yeah, they are. Her:giggles Me: What? Her: Nevermind, I was kidding. I have a dirty mind sometimes. Me: Oh, I get it.
Where the hell did that response come from? The 4th grade?! About five minutes after the call my line hit me:
Kristi, cherry was a pain at 16. At 29, it’s a deal breaker!
Please, share your most recent (or all time) missed lyrical opportunities.
On our campus, the University Center is where many integral university functions occur, and its doors close at midnight. So my friend Dan who publishes “The Daily Flyer” needed to go into the UC tonight to finish up for tomorrow’s circulation. He calls Campus Safety sometime around 12:30am and informs them he is on a pass list to the building and could he please be let in to work on the flyer. Campus Safety informs him that he is not on the “24 hour” pass list, but only on the regular pass list, and therefore cannot be let into the building after midnight.
When Dan told us this story he pointed out to us (and lamented that he did not point out to them, hence this story’s inclusion in this thread) that if his being on the pass list does not allow him into the building after hours, than what is the point of a pass list at all. Following CS’s logic, everyone in the free world is on a pass list to the UC since anyone can get into the building during hours. Needless to say, they never let him in.
Just another lovely example, as Dan says, of Campus Safety’s motto: “We don’t help students . . . we just do our job.”
This was a situation that left me speechless and to this day I don’t have a retort. The main reason is that the person who silenced me was an easy-going, low-key, quiet guy… or so I thought.
The set up: twenty-some years ago, 4 of us were in a club having drinks before dinner. Not dates - just 2 guys and 2 girls who were going thru some Navy training together. The quiet fellow in question had a narrow band of receeding hairline, which led me to quip “You know why his hair is like that? Because when someone asks him a question, he does this [slap forehead] and says ‘I don’t know!’” Three of us dissolve in laughter.
The quiet man, who had been toying with the cherry on a stem in his drink paused, looked at it, looked at me, and said “I’ll trade ya.” Much hilarity ensued, and I learned not to zing him about his hairline. But I still have no idea what I might have responded.
The witty retort to this is, “Matt, stop pointing out what the correct term is and go back to solving your / Hamish’s / Canada’s financial woes! The wolf is at the door!”
First of all, let me just show everyone my Bisexual Club membership card so I can at least get half-permission to make this remark.
A LONG time ago, I was working at Wendy’s. I wandered up to the front line one slow night, and sruck up a conversation with the cashier, who was an extremely flat-chested young woman. She started complaining about how the women’s uniforms at Wendy’s (which at the time were polyester tunics that zipped up in the front) didn’t fit her, and blamed it on her extreme flat-chestedness. She demonstrated this condition by unzipping her tunic, opening it a bit, and daring me to visually locate any hint of a bosom. I had to admit I couldn’t. She then took my hand and placed it flat against her chest, inside said tunic, and said, “See, like a ten-year-old boy.” At this moment, our very gay manager came around the corner and saw two of his employees standing there in an apparently inappropriate moment of personal contact. He stood there for a second and then said in his most withering, gayest tone, “You breeders take it in the back.”
The comeback that occurred to me later that night after it was too late was “NO, you NON-breeders take it in the REAR.”
It’s just as well, I’m sure I would have gotten fired if I’d thought of it on the spot - because there is no WAY I could have had that remark in my head and not said it.
