What part of 'please' don't you understand?

The BBQ Pit
21

Oops. Didn’t notice.

22

Here’s what you do. Chew as many pieces of gum as you can fit in your mouth, stretch the glob into a string, sneak up behind Mr. Towhead, and wind it around his head. Then say something like, “Here is your gum, Master Towhead. Is there anything else I can get for you?”

23

I consider myself a very polite person (my mom washed my mouth out with soap when I told a sister to “shut up” as a kid, to give you an idea of where I got it from), and I find it very difficult to know what to say when confronted with blatant discourtesy. A good example was when I was coming out of a mall washroom, and a couple of ten year old boys ran up to me and yelled at me “Hey, is there a little bitch in there?”, meaning a friend of their’s who was the little girl I saw washing her hands in the can. My response was pretty much to stand there with my mouth hanging open at:

  1. 10 year old boys running up to 34 year old woman and shouting at her
  2. 10 year old boys calling their female playmates “bitches”
  3. 10 year old boys demanding answers from me
  4. 10 year old boys demanding answers from me about something as stupid as this

What I wanted to say was something along the lines of “That is not a polite way to address ANYBODY, much less an adult, and don’t call females bitches, ever. Didn’t your parents teach you any manners (although obviously they didn’t)?” but I was too shocked to do anything but stutter something like “What?”
(Oh, sturmhauke, that’s hysterical. Creates a very vivid image, it does. :D)