Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Life Studies With Professor Eggbert

Yesterday I was thinking that the world would be a better place if people didn’t really know how to insult each other. Have you noticed that personal insults come at you or from you for almost any reason? I have. You yell insults at people while driving. (You don’t even know them.) You tell someone they are stupid if they say something you don’t agree with. You get a slanderous remark if you do almost anything contrary to what someone else thinks you should do. But what if we didn’t know how to properly insult someone? This made me wonder.....

So naturally I had to do an experiment. And naturally, Nicci was my lab rat, so to speak.

While Nicci was cooking up some stuff last night I decided to try and get on her nerves. On purpose. For the scientific approach to this question in my mind. I am good at that, so I didn’t feel I had any worries there. She was just talking about her day and I was constantly making stupid comments when finally it happened; she looked at me and said, “What is your problem? You are an ass tonight.” That was my cue to begin the experiment so I immediately replied, “Yeah, well..... your dress is blue!”

The stunned look on her face was precious! All she could say was “Huh?”

This is how the conversation went:

N: “What is that supposed to mean?”
B: “That’s what you get for calling me an ass.”
N: “But it makes no sense. It’s a stupid thing to say.”
B: “Oh, so now I’m stupid. OK, well..... you aren’t wearing any shoes!”
N: “Oh boy. I can see you are in one of those goofy moods tonight, aren’t you?”
B: “Oh, so now I’m goofy. OK, well..... I saw you driving your car tonight!”
N: “Yeah I do that every day. What, are you blind?”
B: “So now I’m blind eh? Well..... you have brown hair! So there!”

That’s when Nicci started laughing. She didn’t stop for a while either. Then I explained to her my thoughts and let her know that I was using her for my experiment. She even laughed more at that. But in the end, I proved my point. If people didn’t know how to hurl real insults, all conversations would end up in laughter.

Try it today and see how things go. I’ll bet you make some new friends or just get closer to some old ones. Maybe we can make the world a nicer place to live. ;)

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