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Ripostes for all occasions
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So there you all are, sitting around the table eating and drinking and chatting peaceably, when suddenly the B.D.G. opens his or her always outsized mouth:
"Y'all's couch. Can I set a match to it?"
"Oh, Dallas is a mighty fine town. Mighty fine. At least it was 'till all them Rubens and Abrahams started runnin' around."
"Saddam Hussein was just like Hitler. He had to be stopped, whatever the cost."
"You don't appear to dominate your wife. Despite the difference in your ages."
"You worked on Wall Street? Is that why your loafers have tassels?"
"White people don't buy Cadillacs any more."
"Duck – and turkey for Christmas dinner? How very American."
These fragments, actual dinner remarks collected over the years, all have one thing in common. They were delivered as non sequiturs by a B.D.G. – Boorish Dinner Guest. Whether simply tactless, distasteful, or designed to provoke, such comments drop into the middle of a dinner conversation with the impact of a loud fart during a pianissimo passage at a chamber music concert. Jaws drop, eyeballs roll and, like professional musicians who play on regardless, the wise host makes haste to change the subject.
Not all are wise of course. The bigoted, moronic, or cruelly senseless remark stirs a natural tendency to challenge the utterer, devastating him (or her) with incontrovertible logic or razor wit. Alas, few have such logic or wit at their instant command, and too often the B.D.G. escapes unscathed, smiling smugly as her (or his) hearers are reduced to silence or splutter ineffectually.
In the very tedious 1995 film, The Last Supper, the hosts take a page from the classic Arsenic and Old Lace and poison objectionable guests, burying them in the garden. For most situations, this might be a little extreme. If silence or a change of subject is not possible, it is generally best to meet one non sequitur with another. Here are a few of the all-purpose variety, partially remembered from sources I am too lazy to look up or simply made up, suitable for any situation. Share them with your loved one, fire them off as a duet if you choose, and you both will survive nearly any social occasion with your sense of humor, dignity, and faith in humanity intact.
"Are you always so, or is this a special occasion?"
"We've so enjoyed having you. Next time bring a friend – if you have one."
"That's the best argument yet against the existence of intelligent life in the universe."
"And how is the child pornography business these days?"
"I think we can all agree you've made a remarkable recovery from the lobotomy"
"Indeed. Proof positive that it's a wise man who knows his own father. Especially if he was a hermaphrodite."
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