Insults

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I have been doing this fasting-diet thing lately. It’s all the rage in the UK. I’ve been losing about a pound a week, so I’m pleased.

But it has unexpected side effects.

Following the diet’s regime, I eat only a very restricted number of calories two days a week. I can still drink coffee, however. This makes me very hyper. I get extremely excitable, and very talkative, as the day goes on. “Jesus Christ!” Apollonia shrieked at me the other day. “Do you ever stop talking?”

“I can’t help myself,” I said. “It’s my body chemistry. So sue me. And it’s not like you don’t talk incessantly. And –“

“Jesus Christ!” she shrieked again. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

(This counts, between us two, as witty dialogue.)

Later, after some thought, Apollonia came back to me with the following well-planned insults:

“You know, I think there’s a tea named after you. It’s called ‘Constant Comment.’”

“Remember that LifeAlert commercial – ‘I’ve fallen and I can’t get up’? Well, in your case, it’s ‘I’m talking and I can’t shut up.’”

Insults. I love ‘em. They’re like vitamins. They invigorate me.

After several of these, I finally decided to strike back, feebly. I said: “You know what that reminds me of? The word ‘gullible.’ Did you know that it’s not in the dictionary?”

Apollonia looked stricken for a moment. “Really?”

Just as she said it, I hear a snicker from a nearby cubicle. I watched Apollonia’s face crumble as she realized she’d been had. “Really,” I said. “I haven’t gotten a laugh on that joke since the fifth grade.”

“Can I have it?” she said.

“What? The ‘gullible’ joke? Go wild. I assure you that there’s no one in the Western world who hasn’t heard it already.”

“My sisters,” she said positively. “If I haven’t heard it, they haven’t heard it.”

So this is how stupid jokes live into the next generation.

If you’ve never heard it, it’s a new joke.

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