Some things are better left unsaid
Today, as I’m getting ready for a quite brain-activity-intense class, someone comes huffing and puffin into the classroom, walks to the table behind me and puts down her bag – incidentally containing what turned out to be an over-sized old Compaq laptop – on the table with a thump, and exclaims ‘this bag is about as heavy as me!’
What do you say to something like that? I turned around to see the bag in question, and part of me felt like making a slick comment, but another part of me maintained it would be better to keep my mouth shut – so I did. I couldn’t quite let it go, though, so my brain went onto going over various possible comments on the theme ‘this bag is about as heavy as me!’ Some possibilities it came up with are:
- ‘I doubt it; then the bag would have to be much heavier!’ (which would probably be true for even a very slim individual, but doesn’t really sound all that good)
- ‘Wow, that bag must be really heavy then!’ (which again would probably hold true, but sounds even worse)
- ‘No, I don’t think you’re that heavy…’ (which will probably be a so gross understatement that it will backfire)
- ‘I can only imagine…’ (kind of easygoing, but again doesn’t sound all that good when you think about it)
- ‘Really – how much do you weigh?’ (I’ll leave this one uncommented)
Mentally going through these possibilities, it occurred to me you generally should just steer clear of commenting on matters pertaining to people’s weight – good thing I kept my mouth shut 
Later, I came to think of the perfect reply though: ‘as long as it’s not as heavy as me’. Here we get a display of self-irony, detracting the attention from the person whose weight we are not commenting on, and maybe even containing a hidden compliment 
16 comments oktober 31st, 2007