It’s Route 2 on most maps, although a few might include “Governor Ritchie Highway” as well. To locals, it’s “_the_ Ritchie Highway,” as if we’re worried it might be confused with some lesser Ritchie Highway. For years, it was the only route to 50, which takes one across the Bay Bridge and onto the shore, but now we have an Interstate to do the heavy lifting to 50. (Which is a shame, because it means you don’t go past Ann’s Footlongs, an amazing hotdog stand that refused to sell out to a big mall, so it’s still there.)
Friday I was en route to a memorial service when I saw the sign “Aquahart Boulevard.” I don’t get down the Ritchie Highway very often — the last time was an impromptu visit last fall, to Ann’s Footlongs — so I don’t see the sign often. But when I do, I am:
1) 19 again.
2) Working as a lifeguard at an apartment complext pool, an end-of-the-summer job after eight weeks as a counselor at a summer camp.
3) Because I want to buy a pair of Frye boots.
4) On the receiving end of much unwanted attention from a Baltimore Gas & Electric worker who regales me with exciting stories about the dangers of his job. Poison ivy, mainly.
I offer him no encouragment. I’m not mean or rude, just cool. I am counting the days until I head back to college, excited to see all my friends.
One day, when it’s become clear that I’m REALLY not interested, he says: “How much do you weigh?” And quickly guesses a figure that was, I think, at least ten pounds below what I did weigh.
I shrug, not wanting to answer yes or no.
He says: “Because if you would lose twenty pounds, you’d be a kncok-out.”
Even then, I understood the dynamic in the conversation, that he wanted to insult me because I had not responded wit proper awe to his stories of on-the-job excitemetn at BG&E. Maybe I was a bit of the snotty college kid in what woudl have been a more working-class section of Baltimore. But it still leaves me a little breathless, the casual and — give the BG&E guy credit — astute cruelty of it.
On the way back up the Ritchie Highway, I listened to the ongoing coverage of BG&E’s attempts to raise the cost of electricity 72 percent, another kind of insult. I minded the one about my weight much more.
Please provide your stories of careless or careful insults that still sting, no matter how old you get.
Once, a friend told me “You’re lucky you’re not pretty, because then you know a guy likes you for YOU and not what’s on the outside.”
Yeah, we’re not friends anymore.
That’s the worst thing anyone’s ever said to me.
Eliza,
Someone who really, really loves and cares for me said something similar. She was talking about a woman who valued good looks above all, thought beauty was the only gift that mattered. The speaker than noted that it was a tragedy when such a person lost her looks, adding:
“You’re lucky you don’t have to worry about that.”
I choose to believe that she meant that I had other things to fall back on.
I dropped in on another author’s AOL chat, back when I was new at this and thought supporting each other as authors was the same as supporting a friend’s band: You show up at each other’s gigs.
The moderator introduced me when I came in (which I hadn’t expected) and introduced me–publicly–to the author whose chat it was as “another of our wonderful authors.”
“Yes, I know his work,” (or something close to that) was the response.
A minor enough insult, but it took several years to blow that one off.
And that part of the chat was excised from the official transcript.
We used to have a pointy-haired boss over our section of IT where I work. He was an insecure, self-important type who would make up security rules based on the fact that he could, and never mind how difficult he made everyone’s jobs, including his customers.
One day, I went to install a Palm Pilot on a guy’s computer. They just gave him a new machine, and he wanted to keep his old PDA. I said no prob and set him up. Out in the hall, the PHB shows up and says, “So what brings you up to this floor?” I explained about the guy’s PDA.
“But we don’t support those anymore. We buy only Windows CE devices.”
“True, but we bought this one already when we were a Palm Pilot shop. And transferring it to the new computer saves us $400 buying a new one.”
In a sharp tone, he said, “That’s very nice of you,” and stomped off.
He later got fired when, while taking the new CIO – his boss – around, he decided to exert some authority and asked why we didn’t have those phones ringing. “Er… Because no one’s breaking anything right now?”
The CIO flinched. PHB was gone in six weeks.
We threw a party.
Keith: Unless I’m there to cover a story for a mag, I hide in the back at signings and use a false name on chats (except for DetecToday, where I’m a member.) I’ve had a couple of… um… awkward moments when someone recognized me.
And I never mention the Browns, Colts, or Ravens in Indianapolis. Right, Laura?
Oh, there are zillions. I’m so darned thin-skinned, I annoy myself. The insult I remember most, though, is not dissimlar from the one Laura mentions.
Like so many of us, all my life I’ve fought, with varying degrees of success, the battle of the bulge. What made this insult so tough, in retrospect, was that it was so completely thoughtless and that it came from someone I trusted and whose good opinion I craved. I’d been working out, and was looking good, really good – the best I’d ever looked, the smallest dress size I’d ever worn. At precisely the wrong moment, this person said “Wow, you’re almost there”. It wasn’t the words, it was the tone, the timing, and the effect – I got off the treadmill, headed for the Ruffles, and that was the end of that.
In the aftermath (up six sizes and down three) I learned not to let anyone have that degree of control over my self-esteem or behavior, and that all things in moderation (plus frequent trips to Paris
will keep me healthy.
Ok, so this one took place when I was young – fourth grade- but I still remember it perfectly, to this day.
I was very proud of myself for having ‘graduated’ from Barbizon Modeling School (cheesy, right?). Right after graduation, I appeared in a few mini-fashion shows and then had my picture placed in an ad in the newspaper.
In my excitement, I took the picture in to school to show some of my friends. One of my favorite teachers saw the picture as well and decided to announce, to the entire class, that they had a ‘celebrity’ going to school with them. She went on to tell them of the picture and then asked me to show it to everyone. I went to a really small Catholic school, and my classes weren’t very big, so everyone knew everyone else. I was in that middle group – not the uber-cool and not the nerds. I was just there.
Later that day at recess, one of the wannabe ubers came up to me with one of the ubers and said, “Isn’t that a zit on your face? Hehehehe”, and pointed to a small broken blood vessel I had on my cheek, that had been there for months.
Needless to say, I was devastated. And yes, I cried. And cried. Then cried some more. The same teacher heard her say it to me, and in all her teacherly wisdom, deduced the fact she was jealous of me because of the picture. She also made her apologize and scolded her in front of the whole class. Heh.
Like I said, extremely trivial now, but to an 11 year old, it was earth shattering!
When I was 12 and visiting a friend after school, her snotty teenager brother walked into the room to fetch something, glanced at my pale, pale skin, and casually asked, “Have you been embalmed yet?” as he walked back out. I have never fully recovered from that.
I’ve had more than my share of the hurtful insults, and I’ll remember them forever. (Watch out, Miss Kahlil, you’ll be remembered in the next book.)
But I’ve also had some absolutely memorable zingers occur.
When I went to the palm reader at a county fair, the stoop-shouldered “gypsy” fortune teller traced a line on my palm and said, “Ah, your last lover was an abuser and the affair ended violently.”
I shook my head.
“My mistake,” she said, brushing an imagined crumb from my hand, “it’s the next one.”
This one was about eight years ago. At the dinner after a friend’s wedding, Larry and I sat at a table with the man who “relieved” Larry (then a USN type) of his command in Spain. He said hi to Larry, and then commented, “I see you have brought your mother.”
Jerk!
At a magazine Christmas party years ago, the snotty fashion editor looked at me and said–in front of my future wife, and a half-dozen co-workers–”Well, not everybody would have put that combination together.”
That really put me in the party mood, let me tell you.
Then again, he may have had a point.
It occurs to me, reading these anecdotes, that there has to be a lot under the surface to these encounters. I think, for example, that Duane might have laughed if his future wife had made the comment.
A former co-worker ran into me on a weekend once, when I was running around in a very baggy jumper. He said: “I know you should never say this to a woman, but it’s so obvious you’re pregnant!” I wasn’t, but I knew the guy didn’t have a mean bone in his body.
It’s the coiled, considered insult, the _decision_ to hurt another person that fascinates me. And, yes, I’ve given as well as received such insults. But I don’t think I would do it again.
I know the “lose 20 pounds” one well.
But the one that I remember to this day happened in fourth grade. Our teacher asked us to write down the 10 things we would love to do or see or have. We were supposed to use our imaginations. On my list was “I’d love to have an amusement park in my basement” (OK.. I was only 9). A couple of days later, the teacher read back some of the responses. She mentioned one person “loving to hear the crunch of leaves in the fall”, and a couple of other very lovely nature-oriented activities.
Then she sniffed, and said, very snarkily, “Compare that to one little girl (emphasis on little, btw) who said she wanted an amusement park in her basement.”
I was crushed.
I think I wrote about this one before … I was just beginning to date a Latin Hottie I met at a cafe near my house, and it was all rather exciting, I confided in my friend who said “I should put on something slinky and come on to him to see what he really wants from you.”
Yeah, I get it – your way hotter and way cooler then me and there is no way he would ever like me — we aren’t friends anymore.
Here’s one I still remember. A woman who became a “friend” only because our husbands were friends, took a look at a dress I was particularly proud of and said, “I guess every wardrobe should have one.” Bitch.
from my husband (prior to us dating, but definitely while I had a crush on him):
*a beautiful girl walks by*
“You know, if you looked like her, I’d ask you out.”
I know now that he was really just getting my goat, but MAN. That killed me for months. Coincidentally I had months to agonize over it before he did, in fact, ask me out. what a charmer.
When I was moving to Los Angeles, my then-housemate got drunk one night and said, “Why do you want to go to L.A.? Everyone’s so beautiful there.”
This was the same housemate who, when I said I didn’t want to go to a party with a group of people I despised, said, “Is it because you’re heavy?”
The one that sticks permanently in my mind comes from someone who used to be one of my dearest friends – this turned out to be one of several incidents that led me to believe perhaps we weren’t such good friends after all. It happened five years ago after I moved from Boston to DC. I had suffered through a year working for the biggest SOB I’ve ever encountered and was quickly realizing that it was time to find a new job. She piped up and told me that I really should give more thought to my weight because it was bound to hinder my ability to get a job. Now, if she’d said something about my not having a degree I would have understood. But my weight?! I too have fought that battle for years, but I have a hard time believing that 20 pounds will ever stand between me and a job offer. I was hurt and annoyed by her comment and it felt like a cheap shot. Three days after I commenced my job search I was pretty darned smug when I had two solid offers in hand. Don’t hear from her these days.