My nephew Noah had a classmate in seventh grade who mocked him for being short. One day he came up to Noah after lunch and crouched down, as if he were trying to make himself the same height. “Is this what you see down here?” he teased.
Noah paused, struggling for words. Then he replied: Bend down a little lower and kiss my rear end.
Bet there are times you wish you had a line like that.
There’s an art to the comeback line. The best ones put the offender on notice and allow us to stand up for ourselves or someone else.
“A good comeback line rebalances the power in the conversation,” says Selena Rezvani, a leadership consultant in Philadelphia who teaches conversational skills. “It allows us to be hard on the problem but respectful of the person.”
Comeback lines can be tough to come up with in the moment, though. I typically come up with mine days later in the shower.
Thinking on our feet is hard, especially when someone has insulted or offended us. We freeze, psychologists say, because our brain perceives cutting remarks as a threat, which activates our stress response.
It can be good to pause, rather than blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. But often we want to answer an affront. Having go-to comeback lines in our back pocket, along with some other strategies, can help.
Lines that work
I heard a number of effective comeback lines while reporting this column, including this handy phrase: “That’s a strange thing to say out loud.” When asked a nosy or inappropriate question, responding with a question of our own can work: “Why do you ask?” And to reply to a person who is just plain nasty, there’s this old favorite: “Bad day, huh?”
Karena Schwenk, a 51-year-old financial planner in Oakland, Calif., has several go-to lines. She tells someone she finds unnecessarily angry, such as the woman who yelled at her for accidentally cutting her off while exiting a parking garage recently: “You look like you could use a hug today.”
“I am hoping it makes them think,” she says.
If someone is being rude, Schwenk responds with: “Good for you.” She once said it to a friend, after Schwenk had confided that she was getting a divorce and the woman had responded: “Well, my marriage is better than ever.”
Dear reader, repeat after me: “Good. For. You.”
Christopher Kilmartin, 68, a consultant in Fredericksburg, Va., often uses humor in his comebacks, including once while playing the famous Ballybunion golf course in Ireland. When he told his group that he was going to play from the forward tees—colloquially called the ladies’ tees—a man in his group teasingly said he’d have to call him a slur that refers derogatorily to women.
“Oh, I think Lorena Ochoa can hit it farther than any of us,” he replied, referencing the former top-ranked professional female golfer.
Kilmartin says the man apologized, and they went on to have a great time. He says he finds that humordefuses tension.
“It’s not aggressive,” Kilmartin says.
How can you develop better comeback lines? Here’s some advice.
Take a breath
Don’t respond immediately. Ask yourself: Does this matter to me enough to speak up?
“There’s no perfect comeback line, so trust your instincts, whether they’re telling you to change the subject as soon as possible or let the person know this was rude,” says Rezvani.
No response is OK
You may want to give some people a pass, such as a child, your boss, or someone you don’t care about.
Silence can be effective, says Andrea Wachter, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Santa Cruz, Calif. There’s power in a raised eyebrow, a pointed look or by ending the conversation.
Don’t be nasty
I’ve shared this advice often quoted by my Minnesota farm-bred grandmother before, but it bears repeating: “Don’t get in the mud with pigs. The pigs love it. And you just get dirty.”
