The Delayed Comeback

I have trouble speaking up when I should. 'Remember that scene in "Shallow Hal" ... What? You didn't see that movie? Oh, come off it. It's worth viewing ... anyway, remember that scene in "Shallow Hal" when Jack Black takes, like, 10 seconds before he retorts to Jason Alexander and then Jason Alexander says, "You can't come back with a comeback after eight seconds. You got three seconds. Five, tops. It's called a quip, not a sloooowwwwp."

Me? I usually can't even come up with a sloooowwwwp. Instead, I'm that girl who's still grousing about a missed moment months, nay, years after the fact. For instance, here's one that's been bugging me: I had this friend, well, really, not a friend, who just was really an asshole, but I just figured that out too late. She saw me and someone else playing racquetball at the gym one day and she says to me, "I hope the other person wins."

Now what kind of friend says that? The kind who is not a friend. The kind who just desperately needs to cut you down every chance she gets. The kind who has to put on a lot of makeup to look attractive. I wish I had said those things, but instead I just looked at her with a probably confounded and hurt look about me and asked, "why?"

"Because I don't want you to win," she said.

Still, to this day, I have trouble explaining to people why she's an asshole.

So here's my quip. Here's what I wish I would have said to her: "I hope you win ... a soul!!!"

Okay, yeah, I think we're all agreed. I'm just no good at the art of the quip.