Late 1970's, before caller ID. Mom was super busy cooking for all 5 daughters, two sons and Dad. NOT in the mood to deal with malarkey at that moment. She doesn’t swear, keeps everything super clean and is quite religious.

I think about this one all the time.

I just thought of another one, also involving a road trip.

Yeah, the instantaneous witty rejoinder is a rare and beautiful thing! I still think with pleasure of one of the few times I managed one:

I spoke German at home, and also in public. My mom is STILL committed to only speaking German with myself and my brother. And I am 30!

I hope that bystander got themselves something wonderfully frivolous and massively on sale.  

My best comeback, and completely on brand, wasn’t intentional, but a genuine answer to what seemed like a dumb question to my childhood self.

In the early 1990s, I worked with an insufferable woman none of us could stand. At one point during the time I endured her, she walked by while I was talking to another employee.

Seventh-grade boy: “You suck the big one!”

On a high school senior year trip to Europe, there were about 30 students with 3 teachers and one guide for the week. We were all assigned numbers so we could do a count off every time we got on the bus or were regrouping. One morning, after about 8 or 9 students had snuck out to go drinking at bars the night before, w…

This guy in my 10th grade Spanish class loved to spend his time sitting behind different girls in the class and so he could mock them relentlessly. He had a little lackey who cackled at everything he said. The worst part was that he was excellent at pinpointing other people’s insecurities, so it was hard to ignore…

I was browsing through the sporting goods section of Target one afternoon, when I hear an someone yelling loudly. I turn around to see an irate woman gesticulating wildly and screaming “Hey, dumbass!” After a second, I realize she was trying to get MY attention.

In my early 20s I had a part-time job tending bar. There was a guy who would come in every night and ask me out every night. I would turn him down every night. He thought he was God’s Gift. Really smarmy, as if he’d trained under a pick-up artist. He really wanted to be Tom Cruise. One night, my ex boyfriend (with whom…

Not mine, but my mom’s, and it involves a hard-assed cop, so it’s timely.

That is a “little known fact” among a certain unmelaninated people. The original blerds have *always* known.

Here’s the thing: everyone has something. Everyone’s work has something. There will always be a problematic trope in every work. There will always be something the author believes that you find at least somewhat objectionable. This is human nature. Hell, I’m progressive as fuck and I’m pretty sure I have some…

Prince Harry served in the Army, pretty sure he's a good packer.

Mid 90s, DC, oyster bar near the White House, boyfriend and I getting busy in the men’s room, my skirt is up to here, boyfriends hands are right about there...bam, door opens, boyfriend is all of a sudden wrapping his arms around me, which is weird, cause, I’m taller and in heels, so hiding me is like hiding a giraffe…

Pretty rude of him to disrespect one of Fincher’s better movies like that.

My story is from the Other Side of public sex (as in, I wasn’t the one having it).