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A few weeks ago, I was in line to buy a bottle of wine when I heard the young man in front of me tell the sales clerk he didn’t have a driver’s license, but he had a passport. It seemed the clerk had asked for an ID to verify his age.
The young man’s dilemma struck me as ironic; as we were leaving the store and heading toward the parking lot, I said, in a friendly way, “So, you can’t drive, but you can travel to a foreign country.”
He stopped at an enormous white SUV, pulled a set of car keys from his pocket, and said, “Well, I can drive to the liquor store and back.”
Only then did it dawn on me that this young man was well over 6 feet tall, and he probably outweighed me by close to 100 pounds. Clearly, he planned to get into his enormous SUV and drive off down the highway, without the benefit of a driver’s license. And now he knew I knew his secret, too.
I belatedly realized I would have been much better off (that is, much safer) if I had not tried to make a witticism about his plight. I smiled nervously and headed swiftly toward my car.
I have been an adult for decades, so you might think I would have learned long ago the wisdom of keeping my thoughts to myself. It’s not as if I had no chance to acquire this knowledge. I can point to numerous occasions through the years when what I thought were clever remarks or observations have come back to haunt me.
In a college literature course, one of my fellow students had a habit of arriving a few minutes late to each class. I knew her only as a lovely, shy girl from another country; I doubt we had ever exchanged more than a smile or a brief hello.
One day, when the professor was about to start the class, he said, in a slightly peeved tone, “Where is Miss ____?” No one seemed to know, and, because the silence was becoming awkward, I offered cheerfully, “She likes to make a grand entrance.”
What I said was true, but my remark was greeted with more awkward silence, and the professor directed a sour scowl at me. Not a soul so much as giggled knowingly, which surprised me a bit, because we all had witnessed this student’s consistently late arrivals.
Months later, I learned—to my astonishment and chagrin—that my classmate was closely related to the president of the country she hailed from. I suddenly realized my innocent observation could have been interpreted as a snide dig at her privileged status—something I never intended. But the course was over, and there was no chance for me to make amends.
Many years after that, while working as a reporter at a Honolulu newspaper, I chose wit over wisdom once again, and again I lived to rue the day.
A new editor had just arrived from a newspaper in the Midwest. The publisher was taking him around the newsroom to meet the employees, and the new editor was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt with a thin, black tie.
This outfit might have been standard attire at his last newspaper. But in a city where many men really do wear reverse-print Hawaiian shirts to work every day, he looked sadly out of place.
Instead of simply saying, “Hello! How nice to meet you,” I chose a different approach.
When the publisher said, “This is Susan Hooper,” I looked up from pounding out a story at my computer terminal and said, “Where’s your aloha shirt?”
I meant it as a light-hearted comment, and I hope I at least smiled as I spoke. But I instantly realized I had made a terrible mistake.
The new editor clearly did not see the humor in my question. I suspect he perceived it as flippant insubordination, and it set the tone for our subsequent rocky relationship. If I had it to do over, I would have stuck to pleasantries and platitudes.
As I recall these and myriad other examples of ill-considered remarks I have made, I wonder where this impulse comes from.
My mother was of Irish descent, and the women in her family were known for their quick, sometimes acerbic, wit. My father had a more gentle sense of humor; he seemed to use humorous observations as a way to bring people together.
I like to think I take after my father in this regard. But perhaps there are times when, without my awareness, the razor edges of Celtic wit attach themselves to my words before I have a chance to blunt them. “Say something nice” should really be my mantra, instead of “Say something clever.”
I have some evidence I might be learning this lesson, however belatedly.
Recently I went shopping for a favorite household product—a spray cleaner that claims to kill nearly 100 percent of viruses and bacteria. In the past, this product occasionally has been in short supply. But as I approached the aisle where I had found it before, I was startled to see two full shelves of gleaming spray bottles.
“Wow,” I said, as I noticed a woman standing in front of the shelves.
Unsolicited, the woman said, “Right. They’re preparing for the coronavirus.” Then she shook her head in disgust and added, dismissively, “But it’s just the common cold.”
Having read many reputable media reports about the toll that this new strain of virus was taking on people in China and elsewhere, I was shocked by her ill-informed assessment.
But instead of trying to come up with a witty, fact-based rejoinder, I just nodded, picked up a bottle of the cleaner, and silently left the aisle. Some remarks, I am finally discovering, are better left unsaid.
Copyright © 2020 by Susan Hooper
