Coming THISCLOSE To Saying The Right Thing

Sometimes I think of a hilarious insult or comeback, and then I completely and totally, without meaning to, ruin it. My sister was bragging about something once, and a bunch of us were sitting in the living room, and I looked at her and said, dead serious, “Even a blind nut finds an squirrel sometimes.”

The entire room bursts into guffaws, even though I SWEAR I MEANT “Even a blind squirrel finds an acorn sometimes.” Which, really, would have been the perfect response and everyone would have been laughing WITH me, instead of AT me, as is more usual. Oh, well. This was a year ago. I wasn’t a kid, I was a fully grown, mostly functional adult when this happened. Fully capable of stringing together a coherent sentence...sort of.

I guess you had to have been there, because it was seriously hilarious. The thing is, I love funny insults and jokes. Sadly, I sometimes ruin them in the retelling. It might be a family thing. My brother Charlie can’t finish a joke correctly to save his life, even though he’s a fairly funny individual in regular life. No matter how long or short the joke is, he mangles the punchline, which either makes the rest of us laugh at him, or just stare blankly in confusion, because HE is laughing hysterically and the resyt of us have no idea why or if that was funny.

Also, I hate those times when you are arguing with someone, or being teased, and you just end up mumbling “oh...YOUR MOM!” because you can’t think of anything, and then 3 minutes later, you think of the most spectacularly perfect thing to say, but the moment has passed and it’s too late. Arg, that’s such a frustrating feeling!


Or when you’re going over the conversation in your head later, and you craft a wondrous speech full of excellent points and subtle sarcasm, that lightly hints at your adversary being an overgrown puppet with a hand up their ass that dances to the tune of THE MAN, but of course, you’ll never get to say it. By the time you see them next, the time to have given your oratory masterpiece is over, and that person will never realize how close they came to being auditorily eviscerated by your words.

Effective AND annoying. What more could you want??