A Witty Repartee

Are you one of those people who have a good comeback to a derogatory comment directed at you? I mean, when faced with an insult you can fire back with humorous sarcasm?

I'm not but if possible I'd think the actor Bill Murray would be the king of this. He wouldn't do it in anger, either, but in a measured voice to get his point across and everyone would laugh hilariously.


\Winston Churchill was famous for having a witty repartee. At a dinner party the lady next to the inebriated Churchill said to him, "Lord Churchill, you're drunk". And he fired back with, "You're ugly but in the morning I'll be sober". Another famous Churchill comeback goes like this. Lady Astor: "Winston, if you were my husband I'd poison your tea". Churchill: "Nancy, if you were my wife I'd drink it". Isn't that classic.

If you're anything like me you can come up with cleverly funny lines when presented a situation--------------twenty four hours later!

The reason I bring this up is because of something that occurred last August 7th. I had driven my son's family from the lake to the Minneapolis airport. I pulled up to the drop off lane at the airport. There were two of them. One was curb side and the other one lane was to the outside. I parked just in front of another vehicle on the outside but they had the opportunity to back up ten feet and drive out around me.

My grandkids and my daughter in law exited the car and were standing on the curb. My son and I struggled to get the damned car seat for the baby unhitched. It was like it was welded into the car. My son was tugging and twisting with it for a good sixty seconds. We'd been occupying the space for three minutes, tops. Then some guy in a Wyoming t-shirt yells out, "ARE YOU GOING TO BE THERE ALL DAY"? Well, I looked at him and responded, "You talkin' to me, cowboy"? Pretty snappy, huh? Anyway, he came back with, "Yeah I'm talkin' to you".

 Now is when it gets good. I really needed Bill Murray or Winston Churchill but what I got was MJ Hawkeye. I said, and you might want to write this down for future use, "Why don't you S-I-U-Y-A". His retort was, "why don't you S-I-U-Y-A". Not to be outdone by his witticism and unwilling to let it drop I said, "Eat Me"! Know what his response was? "No, you eat me"! It was like there were two baboons from the zoo standing on the airport curbside.

At any rate, my son extricated the car seat from the vehicle and The Cowboy saw what was going on and was slightly taken aback. One thing that happened as a result was that Genevieve and Oscar, my age seven and under grandchildren, learned a couple of new phrases and Grandpa felt like a dried out turd.

Then, driving back to the lake and still steaming, I came up with a zillion come backs for the dude. I could have used the lines from the 80's: "you so ugly you should put underwear on your head. I've used the following line when teaching in high school: "You're a good example of why some animals eat their young" That would have been a good one. Any one of those would have been a good 'witty repartee' but, no, I had those in the moth part of my brain.

Maybe the best thing to do would have been to say, "I'm very sorry but I can't get my grandson's car seat out of the car". That would have been easy and defused a potentially dangerous situation. The trouble is I didn't think of that one until twenty-four hours after the fact.