new thread
Hi Guys and a few Gals (to burrow jonalbear's occasional greeting - lol),
Last week I recieved a bizarre comment from a store owner near where I work. He has seen me before; but, I usually have my hair tied back in a bun, --- and this particular day I had it all down, because it was still air-drying. Anyway, I was on my way to get a cup of coffe when I pass his little liquor & grocery store, walking at a fairly fast clip (with loose hair bouncing and flowing wildly behind, I'm sure)...
"Your hair is too long!" was his comment I heard immediately after passing him while he was taking a cigarette break.
"So, WHAT?" was my immediate response.
Gee, is that all I could come up with at the time: "So, what?" I guess I was too interested in my destination of getting a cup of coffe before work that to come up with something more intelligent than to simply say, "So, what?" What i WISHED i had said was about a thousand other far more clever retorts; but, no, instead all that popped out of my mouth at that time was that odd one....
Anyway, I just plowed ahead and got my coffee. When I returned to walk by his store before getting back into my truck, I noticed he had scurried safely back inside his store by then, avoiding looking at me in the eye as I passed. I couldn't help but notice his boring, conventional, "typical male" short haircut. In hindsight, I wished I had challenged him, "What do you mean, 'too long?', --- there is no such thing!" But, sometimes real responses do not always match the clever Hollywood lines that we see entertaining us in movies!
And now for a completely different topic...
Does anyone else here have cats that like to steal and play with hair-ties? I have 4 cats; but, one in particular seems obsessed with always taking my ties, --- and will go to great length to do so!
Thanks in advance, to any and all who respond. I'm away from my computer for much longer durations than I used to be, --- so, I don't always get back to folks to thank them in a timely manner like I should, sorry to say.
Long Lox 4ever,
Ken in San Francisco
Nah man, you did good! Think of it this way, what if you are walking down the street, and a drunk homeless person says that same thing. Would you care? Hell no! I don´t event think you´d give him an answer. Because his opinion isn´t worth a cent in your world! You would just shake your head and think "poor man".
So if that guy says the same thing, who cares? Treat him like a drunk homeless person, because that persons opinion doesn´t matter to you!
If you would take offence, or start an argument, or give an unnecessary comeback, he has won. If you truly want your own hair, other peoples opinions doesn´t matter, even if they try to force it on you.
So next time someone either in a polite way, or rude way, makes a bad comment about your hair, just shake your head and think: "Poor man/woman".
An opinion of a drunk person yes, you shouldnt care, but whats the problem with an homeless person? Just because its homeless you shouldnt care about its opinions? Bad choice of words in my opinion...
I agree. While a drunk person certainly chooses his own fate, I think that at least a significant portion of homeless people have no home due to circumstances outside of their control.
But Nick, at the risk of being pedantic, you also made a bad choice of words when you said "its", as opposed to he/she, thereby treating the homeless person as an ob ject.
The problem is that english is not my native language...theres always errors...
Ah, ok. Nevermind then.
Still, I find it mildly ironic when someone remarks on the "choice of words" of another and then makes a similar mistake =P
True =)
isn't a drunk homeless person drunk? just something to think about.
If he is drunk it isnt really his opinion =P
The pronoun 'its' should be replaced with 'their' if you don't want to limit gender. There's no need to put 'his/her'. Some people do the latter in a self conscious way, but the plural form has always been the correct gender neutral form for the singular. Sorry to be pedantic, but many people don't realise this.
"Always been"? Probably not, but certainly for centuries. One can also use the masculine form when the sex of a person is unknown; using 'his/her' was Derf's suggestion, not Nick's anyway. The slash configuration is a relatively new suggestion and it is not likely to prevail due to its awkwardness. Ditto for replacing the slash with the word "or".
Pronouns are a very integral part of a language and their usage is tough to change. They have changed, though. About a thousand years ago, there was no word "its" at all, and the possessive form for a thing was "his". Also, "em" was used for what we now use "them" for, and when people leave out the "th" in speech today, they are NOT being lazy. They are pronouncing the word as it was spelled centuries ago, and as it is still often pronounced to this day. We have also dropped the usage of "thee, thou, thy, and thine", but that also occurred centuries ago. Don't look for lasting changes in pronouns within anyone's lifetime.
Bill
Always is a long time. I probably should have specified modern English, which would have limited us to the last five hundred years or so, which may or not be right for this particular example.
It's surprising how often forms that most people take for rough slang are actually just archaisms that are (or rather, once were) precisely correct, and yet only get used by the most blue collar people.
For example, when we use an 'er' ending to denote a profession, that's from the French 'eur' ending, which would have come to us through the Normans, but the older English form was 'erer'. I used to think that people I knew back home in London who talked about 'carpenterers' and gardenerers' instead of 'carpenters' and 'gardeners', for example, did so because they were ignorant. It's true in a limited sense, in that their native language hadn't been polluted by too much exposure to education.
Another example like that is to talk about 'learning' someone how to do something, when most people would now say 'teaching'. It's easy to assume that this is some form of mistake, but again in fact it's really a valid archaism that is still sometimes heard in Cockney speech.
You are correct.
However, most drunk people that begin drinking with a home do not lose it due to their drunkenness. This case is relatively rare.
Far more often, homeless people begin to drink BECAUSE they have no home. Now that is far more common.
Thus, when you talk of someone who has a combination of both traits, I assume that in most cases the homelessness came first, and then they became drunk.
Ah, I should´ve known someone would take that the wrong way. There is always someone!
My point is that we all value peoples opinions differently. If you truly value your own opinion about your hair highest, then there is no reason for a comeback. You don´t have to prove anything to that person. Even if it´s the president of the united states or a drunk homeless person.
But, I mean, if you personally would love to hear hairstyle opinion of a drunk homeless person, that is your choice. Personally, I wouldn´t care what they had to say about my hair. :)
And the majority of homeless people have long hair =P, they are one of the last persons i imagine talking bad about someones hair =P.
I don't discount the opinion of homeless people, or even drunks, really, unless they are actually drunk at the time. OTOH, nobody is ever going to persuade me to cut my hair anyway.
I have worked in London and now work in Washington DC, and you always see a lot of homeless in cities. In London most of the homeless people I saw were alcoholics, but in the US it seems that a lot more aren't. I suspect that this is because the US provides less of a social safety net. In short, America is not a good place to be broke.
LOL
Erik don't you love it when these threads go this way?
Kevin
i have two kitties. one is very sweet and princess-like (pigeon). the other is hell in a bottle (walrus). they both love hair ties, and so whenever one gets too stretched out or whatever i throw it on the floor as a new toy. pigeon is quite content with this set up.
i like to be able to easily access my hair ties, so i put hooks at the top of my bathroom mirror to hang them on. it has been set up this way for a couple of years. for some reason just recently, walrus has decided this is the new cat toy store - - but of course she only likes to shop at two or three in the morning. i will be sound asleep and suddenly wake up to CRASH BANG CRUNCH!!! only to walk into the bathroom and see everything that had shortly before been on the counter now on the floor, with my dumb little kitty sitting in the middle of it all. she can't jump high enough to reach the hair ties, but she sure gives it quite the effort.
walrus has also been known to watch me take a hair tie down and put my hair up. she will then follow me until i sit down, and try to get the tie out of my hair. that can be quite obnoxious. it's a good thing she's cute...
Never thought I would say this...but some cats are just too cute. It distracts from their inherent evil (yes I still believe cats are evil...call it a hunch). But yeah, I have fallen for a particular cat that belongs to a particular girl...both are fun to squeeze and cuddle.
the other day i got a reply saying when you gonna cut your hair boy?! i simply replied when you gonna get a new brain and they didnt say anything else and i walked off haha it was funny though
That's a great story XD that kinda thing happened to me a while ago, and all I said was "nope, yours is too short." ^.^ He left me alone after that. =P
I don't have issues with cats...but I DO have to be careful when I kneel down to give the chickies some attention. They've figured out that the best way to let me know they're hungry is by pecking at clumps of my hair. XD
Again, great story!
Tristan
Nope. No cats steal my hair ties...but I have a girlfriend who does...and she has a cat...funny really...
My answer would've caused a fight...
"YOUR HAIR'S TOO LONG!"
"Yeah, well your dick's too short."
Hey Ken...
People are interesting creatures (trying to be polite).
They think that their opinion is important to everyone and that everyone should know what they think.. People like that are very hard to deal with... I probably would've reacted poorly; as my tolerance is low for idiots right now; glad you responded so well..
Take care.. and talk to you soon..
Tristan
If I was in that situation, I would have told him "And your hair is too short!". Long hair forever!
For your second topic, I do have cats, and I can never have any hair ties sitting around... EVER. They take them and then that's the end of that, I find myself buying new packs every week because my cats destroy them.
got locked in the bathroom, and put all my hair ties own the heating register. He has also grabbed my tail as well to play with it.
I am the type of person who very rarely has clever comebacks within a reasonable amount of time, so I can relate. I don't think your "so what" was that bad, though; it showed that you don't care about his opinion.
I have noticed my pony ties disappearing at home, where my mother has a cat. Then again, I lose them in my dormitory room as well [g].
Tracy
My orange tabby likes to steal them off the bathroom counter and off of my nightstand. He'll watch and wait until he thinks I'm not looking and then the paw snakes out. All the better if they get knocked onto the floor!
Mouse
Hey,
Yea my cat SCSI (computer jargon for those who don't know) likes to grab my ties, also while I have it in my ponytail. I guess she prefers my hair down and not up in the tail, which is funny because I would think the tail would be fun for a cat to play with. But she nicely bites down on the tie and pulls it down my hair and runs off with it.
So far I have been lucky and she hasn't taken any hair with it.
Take care,
-J
That's too funny you named the cat SCSI. I named my cat 12/24 Tape Autoloader, but we all call her Missy now. Since Missy is getting chunky, I may have to upgrade her from 12/24 DDS3 to DLT. :-D
Hi Ken that was some encounter even though brief but I would have come back with OH YEA!!!! Well your hair is TOOO Short! You might get sun burnt with hair like.Thats assuming its close to a crew cut or something.
As for the cat issue well I only have three but my newest one Opal has a bad habit when I'm not nearby of walking over to my laptop when I'm online touching the screen with her paw and then I run back because she winds up sitting on the keypad with the computer making all sorts of beeping and squawking noises.I think they bored of my hair ties.LOL Don't work too hard Ken as we miss you here.
Mark
There was a great cartoon in the Sunday funnies about two weeks ago. It was captioned, "The first and last 'take your cat to work day'", and the image had a cat in every cubicle, with every cat doing something on the keyboard. Some were sleeping, some were licking themselves, some were walking around on the keys, etc. It was a hoot!
Bill
LOL!Bill that sounds like an awesome image being I experienced it in real life.What comic was that as I'd like to find it just for the laugh.If it was in my local Sunday paper unfortunately it already made it to the recycle bin.
Mark
LOL my cat acually wakes me up chewing my hair. It hurts! He thinks of my hair as a toy lol.
Best Wishes,
Josh
All you have to do is walk by with Even one day. Both of you flaunting your "just right" lengths wordlessly is enough to lift your spirits I bet.
Elizabeth (who had fun writing a story for you then lost it trying to copy it in case something went wrong while posting but it disappeared when I did control-V rather than control-C)
Anybody know any way to regain the next to last thing in cut and paste memory? I had copied it but then foolishly picked something else up afterward instead of pasting it somewhere temporarily.
Sometimes control-Z will work to undo stuff, but if that doesn't, you're probably out of luck.
Bill
Ha Ha Ha. What a joke. And at your age Ken being talked to like this. Now, I could see it happening to you at 16 or 17, but hardly at 25 years of age. The guy MUST need a pair of specks!
No cats here, just my 2 Chihuahuas. The painting is of myself and my "longhaired" Chihuahua: "Heidi."
But back to comments. I had one of the funniest last week while in the grocrey store. Some little kid with his mother pointed at me and asked his mom if I was Jesus! I smiled at the little kid and said "bless you my son for saying that." (Now let his mother figure her way out of that one.) LOL :-)
Take care ken
Justin~
I had a three year old with his dad ask me if I was Santa once. I did not do it, but it was tempting, to say, "Yes, I am, and you've been very good this year, so you will get every present you want!" (And watch Dad have a coronary....)
Bill
If anyone says anything like that I either give them the "you're gonna burn in hell for that" look, or the "you're too low down the food chain for me to even waste my breath on" look.
~ Dave
Your thread title and your post really made me smile. I'm glad to know that I'm not the only one who thinks up the correct response when the time has passed. We should start a dorky reply club. ;)
And yes, my cat loves to play with hair ties, and they are never to be seen again.
My Hair Site
Dear UC,
You are so right that we cannot always come up with the right response at the right time, but why did you not follow him into his little emporium and tell him his hair was too short?
Cal.
So what seems like a fair enough reply to me. It does puzzle me just what he thought your hair was too long for? To me, too long would be if I could trip over my hair, but there are people who are happy with it longer than that.
We have half a dozen cats, but I don't think any of them has a thing for hair ties. They all seem to like sitting on keyboards, though ...
I was just out in San Diego attending a computer-related conference when I got a similar comment from somebody. I guess I had the advantage of it being later in the day, when I had my faculties about me.
My response was: "There are 2 people in this world whose opinions matter to me. You sir, are not one of them"
There was one event at the same conference that was kind of funny. We were in a workshop and were all pair with a partner for an exercise. I was sitting on the front row and was paired with a young woman with shoulder length hair. When the instructor told us that the person with the longest hair was to go first in the exercise, there was some giggling (I learned later that the instructor was pointing at us when he said that). Even though I didn't see that, I guessed it anyway. So I took the band from my hair and "fluffed" it up to emphasize its length and volume. Then there was quite a lot of laughter in the room.
I would have used one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies, "The Big Lebowski".
"Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man."