The Dumbest Comment I Ever Heard

[indycop]

OUCH!! Lordbest!
I am not as controlled as most and my response usually starts with "you had best get to steppin..." Though not usually hat related.

 

[dhermann1]

LB

There are, and always have been, a lot of older people who hate younger people just because they're young. This lady (and I use the term loosely) deserves to stew in her own miserable juices. (*Bleep*) her.

 

[Flatch]

If I may make a sure-fire suggestion to shut up any fool under the age of, say, 25...whatever ignorant comment they feel entitled to make about your lid, just look 'em straight in the eye and calmly say,

"You have/had an IEP, didn't you."

Odds are they'll have some idea what one is and it'll silence them on the spot. Your reply will be as a verbal frozen icepick to the gut, rather than a sloppy bludgeon of hot-headed retort they may well laugh off.

Unless of course they say "yeah," in which case all you need do is smile politely and say, "Comments like that one are why."

EDIT: due to the sensitive nature of this reply, be careful when you use it. I'd suggest only in a situation where you're pretty sure the offender will come away having learned a valuable lesson from it.

 

[D.W. Suratt]

I wonder if size matters in getting dumb comments from people. As a former powerlifter who stands about 6' 2" and still weighs 250 pounds I rarely get comments about what I look like. Of course the badge and gun stops a lot of it too.

 

[TopGumby]

Yesterday I was visiting an enormous vintage & antique centre, and I had a woman come up to me and this ensued:

Woman: "You have no right to wear that hat."
LB: "Excuse me, madam?"
Woman: "That hat is for a responsible older person. You young people, you think you can have it all. You are rude, obnoxious, you are lazy, you have no work ethic and expect everything to be handed to you on a platter. It is your generations fault we are having this financial crisis."
LB: "As you say, Madam."
LB exits scene, stage right.

...

At the point where she said "You young people" I think I would have hugged her.

But, I have a several decade head start in life on young Mr. LB.

 

[LordBest]

Well, I have to admit I was sorely tempted to suggest a suitable location to enshrine the antique lamp she was carrying at the time, but decided I was above validating her opinions on youth. Hardly fair on the lamp as well, it was rather nice.
Unfortunately being a rather rotund 5'6 there is little intimidation factor in my appearance.

 

[D.W. Suratt]

LB i'm inclined to agree with Carldelo, I think she must have been having some family issues with someone your age and took it out on you, and like Indycop I would not have been near as restrained in my response.

 

[Aerol]

IEP?

Being over the age of 25, I have no idea what an IEP is. Enlighten me.

 

[Ordinary Guy]

Yesterday I was visiting an enormous vintage & antique centre, and I had a woman come up to me and this ensued:

Woman: "You have no right to wear that hat."
LB: "Excuse me, madam?"
Woman: "That hat is for a responsible older person. You young people, you think you can have it all. You are rude, obnoxious, you are lazy, you have no work ethic and expect everything to be handed to you on a platter. It is your generations fault we are having this financial crisis."
LB: "As you say, Madam."
LB exits scene, stage right.

Then I walked away. To my knowledge I had done nothing to provoke this, I was hardly being loud or obnoxious, speaking only in a low voice with my mother regarding antiques. I have to say I took offense, many of my friends are working 50 hours weeks IN ADDITION to a full time batchelor degree at university, which clocks in at another 50 hours with study time (what the guides recommend). I am lucky enough not to be, but I would hardly classify the generation as lazy. And all this because I wore a fedora?

Sounds like your Fedora got blamed for everything but the Kennedy assassination

Don't know what I would have done in that spot........ but sounds like you did good..... Hope you touched the brim of your hat to her before you exited

 

[Ordinary Guy]

Being over the age of 25, I have no idea what an IEP is. Enlighten me.

If it is what I think it is:

An IEP is a document that delineates special education services for special-needs students.

 

[Riot Earp]

Woman: "That hat is for a responsible older person. You young people, you think you can have it all. You are rude, obnoxious, you are lazy, you have no work ethic and expect everything to be handed to you on a platter. It is your generations fault we are having this financial crisis."

Obviously, the woman was completely out of line and probably has major "issues." Having said that, her third sentence pretty much describes the majority of young people who work in my building. Sad, but true.

 

[Dr Doran]

College, which is supposed to stand for higher learning, tends to be more of a place for sophmoric humor, poor taste, excess and conformity in the name of individuality. The opinoins of college students tend to count for little in the way of classy and chances are they were in a drunken stupor anyway.

The taste-impoverished things I see daily are mind-boggling at the University of California, Berkeley. Someone was talking on his cell phone WHILE HE WAS SITTING IN A RESTROOM STALL yesterday. The (only) good news is, when I told my Latin students about it, they were horrified. Not one of them said, "So what? What's the big deal?" (The other good news is, at least there is a healthy number of students taking Latin 2 to begin with ... 11 in my class and 15 in another person's, and these are Latin 2 classes, not first semester Latin, so this means that these kids have stuck with it. Some of them are very good, too.)

Yesterday I was visiting an enormous vintage & antique centre, and I had a woman come up to me and this ensued:

Woman: "You have no right to wear that hat."
LB: "Excuse me, madam?"
Woman: "That hat is for a responsible older person. You young people, you think you can have it all. You are rude, obnoxious, you are lazy, you have no work ethic and expect everything to be handed to you on a platter. It is your generations fault we are having this financial crisis."
LB: "As you say, Madam."
LB exits scene, stage right.

You did the right thing and you should be proud of yourself.

 

[Fletch]

LB, did you at least doff while being addressed by the la-- er woman?

(No one capable of such unprovoked effrontery qualifies as a lady. Of course some of the older set are quite confident that decorum works only upwards and they can say anything they want to their juniors and inferiors.)

 

[jamespowers]

Yesterday I was visiting an enormous vintage & antique centre, and I had a woman come up to me and this ensued:

Woman: "You have no right to wear that hat."
LB: "Excuse me, madam?"
Woman: "That hat is for a responsible older person. You young people, you think you can have it all. You are rude, obnoxious, you are lazy, you have no work ethic and expect everything to be handed to you on a platter. It is your generations fault we are having this financial crisis."
LB: "As you say, Madam."
LB exits scene, stage right.

Then I walked away. To my knowledge I had done nothing to provoke this, I was hardly being loud or obnoxious, speaking only in a low voice with my mother regarding antiques. I have to say I took offense, many of my friends are working 50 hours weeks IN ADDITION to a full time batchelor degree at university, which clocks in at another 50 hours with study time (what the guides recommend). I am lucky enough not to be, but I would hardly classify the generation as lazy. And all this because I wore a fedora?

I could not have held my tongue. My response would have been something like: "Listen ma'am, I am not your husband so I don't have to listen to you. Secondly, I am not your son so you have no idea if I am lazy or any of the other laundry list of things mentioned." Exit stage right.

 

[LordBest]

I had intended to doff, and had reached for the brim of my hat, but the vehemence and speed with which the woman spoke surprised me somewhat so I did not really doff properly. I did as I was leaving however.
There are certainly very many slovenly young people, no doubt about that, but even many of the unkempt university students I know are still working while studying, something which most older Australians did not have to do, or not to the same extent. If the woman had said I looked like an idiot I would not have minded, it was the claim that all young people are lazy which particularly annoyed me.

(No one capable of such unprovoked effrontery qualifies as a lady. Of course some of the older set are quite confident that decorum works only upwards and they can say anything they want to their juniors and inferiors.)

This certainly seems true, 18 months ago I offered an older woman my seat on a tram, while travelling to university. She spat on me and went and stood down the other end of the bus.

 

[Jerekson]

This certainly seems true, 18 months ago I offered an older woman my seat on a tram, while travelling to university. She spat on me and went and stood down the other end of the bus.

Are you frikking kidding me?!?

 

[Jerekson]

As a note, there is probably nothing on this Earth that annoys me more than when elderly folks have the right to be complete jerk-offs because of their senority.

This is probably a bad example, but yesterday I was watching Jerry Springer (look, I was sick, and you know there's nothing but Jerry Springer on in the middle of the day), and happend to come in on an episode where a woman was being brutally inhumane to her daughter, all the while claiming that she deserved respect from being an elder...made me sick, and the only reason it made me sick was because I've actually seen that on more than one occassion.

 

[Diamondback]

The taste-impoverished things I see daily are mind-boggling at the University of California, Berkeley. Someone was talking on his cell phone WHILE HE WAS SITTING IN A RESTROOM STALL yesterday. The (only) good news is, when I told my Latin students about it, they were horrified. Not one of them said, "So what? What's the big deal?"

Hey, be careful--some of us, if we take or place a call on the loo, either it's urgent or it's an editorial comment about the other party...

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Now playing: John Barry - Gunbarrel/Traction Table/Gassing The Plane/Car Chase
via FoxyTunes

 

[ET]

Apocryphally, our 'elder statesman', Lyndon Baines Johnson, used to flush while on the phone in the bathroom. He had the phone specially installed in there.

He was also the second president to wear a Stetson Open Road as his normal headwear....He bashed it differently than Harry Truman.

I am no longer horrified by much that other people do on their cell phones, other than ignore traffic while I am driving in their vicinity.

 

[indycop]

This is probably a bad example, but yesterday I was watching Jerry Springer

Sorry Jerekson but you lost it right there.lol