"Q" is for QUIP

Which, according to the online Merriam Webster is: a clever usually taunting remark. I feed on quips, literally. When I hear a good one in a movie or on T.V. it is like someone has suddenly chucked a bonbon at me. I savor it and suck on it. Quips make life interesting. A quip is also often: "a witty or funny observation or response usually made on the spur of the moment." (Thank you to Merriam Webster again.)

To be able to deliver a good quip though--there is a pleasure rush that I constantly crave.

Of course, my fondness of quipping doesn't really render me Sound-Of-Music-Julie-Andrews nice. And in instances, it sort of aligns me more with menacing ladies like say. . . Malificent from Disney's "Sleeping Beauty." Remember at the opening to "Sleeping Beauty" when Malificent quips, ". . . oh how nice, and the rabble too!" in reference to the three good fairies having been invited to King Stephen's party for the infant Aurora?)

Yup, that was me, the six-year-old snickering over the quip that Disney's villainess let fly.

Quips are handy though. They can infuse a bit of humour into otherwise humourless situations which make them excellent for the workplace. This of course would be the quip of the second kind--witty, funny observations.

Quips of the first kind, the cutting kind, are nearly indispensable for dealing with social situations in which you have been slighted. For example, here in Japan groups of junior high and high school students often like to scream HERRO at passing foreigners. No, they don't know me, they don't even recognize me from anywhere, they just recognize from my western face and build that I am indeed, a foreigner. This seems to grant most of the population of Japan the inalienable right to scream poorly pronounced English greetings at me whenever they are in the mood to do so.

I have considered stalking groups of Japanese on their famous tour packages in the U.S. to scream "KONNICHIWA" at them again and again but sadly, experience tells me that a) anything a monkey does is entertaining and in their eyes I would be just another excellent example of a gaijin/monkey screaming "KONNICHIWA" at them. b) many Japanese upon spotting a foreigner fail to understand anything coming out of the foreigner's mouth as they are propelled into a fear of English void. To wit, a friend of mine, in the course of a conversation with a woman in her town was left open mouthed when the other woman at the end of their conversation said, "Oh my. How do you and your husband communicate if he doesn't speak English?" Of course, neither did this town-woman speak any English and my friend had been conversing with her in fluent Japanese for well over half an hour or so. I have asked for directions (in Japanese) in downtown Tokyo many times to have the person I approached answer me in broken English, "No, EN-GU-RI-SHU." Gee thanks. No English? Riiiiightttt. . . even pointing out that that is fine, as I speak Japanese often doesn't quell the fear enough to get a decent response out of them. And finally c) I was raised never to point or stare at strangers much less yell out something at them. Such behavior is as reprehensible and appalling to me on a gut level as walking up and urinating on a stranger would be. I would be much more comfortable (and capable of) curling up into a fetal ball on the sidewalk and chanting, "happy place, happy place" than pointing and yelling at strangers.

So when I am walking down the road and pass a group of high school students who wait until I am about half a block away from them to scream "HERRO! AMERICAN JIN! EIGO JIN!" the quip is my weapon of choice. I go back. I smile. I turn and point at my posterior. "Oh my! I didn't realize that greetings were to be offered to people's bums! I thought they were to be given face-to-face!" Then I take my foreign ass and leave.

I've also been practicing a few quips in Spanish and French alternatively as it drives me nuts that most Japanese assume that ALL Westerners speak English.