Quip on the draw

In my last post I talked about the attention I received from men. This came, not only in physical form, but verbal form. Sometimes as the so-called “double entendre”. Sometimes as thinly veiled sexual comments. And sometimes as blatant propositions.

And during that time I discovered how to ‘confuse and defuse’ men in these situations. I simply reply as though the man has made a perfectly sensible and straightforward comment. Let me give some examples.

From a co-worker: ‘”I saw you on my way to work this morning. What’s a nice girl like you doing standing on the corner like that?” Spoken with that familiar leer.

My response was to – say it with me – treat it like a sensible and straightforward question - and give him a discourse on how economical it was to take the bus to and from work each day.

He made a gaping fish mouth for a few seconds then wandered off without even having made a reply.

See? Neatly done. No voices were raised; he didn’t get embarrassed; and he didn’t have the opportunity to say “I was just joking! Can’t you take a joke?” The (male) co-worker sitting next to me said, “I thought you would take his head off for saying that!” And I said, “No need to. He won’t do anything like that again.” And he didn’t; he treated me with respect during the rest of my tenure.

Or how about the question asked while staring at my chest: “Are those real?” I say, “Of course they are real. I am not one of those women who wear glasses just because they think they are a cute fashion accessory! I wear glasses because I need to!” (Insert evil chuckle here. There’s juuuuust not much they can do with that one.)

You get the idea. Try it sometime. It can be quite a fun thing to do, watching that confused look come over their face as they try to figure out what just happened.

Camellia