March 10, 2002
dry wit
Tara's mother was in town on Thursday, and Tara -- you remember her, right? -- wanted to redecorate her bathroom. That is to say, she wanted to repaint it, which entailed stripping the walls. Somewhere along the line, stripping the wallpaper off the walls led to taking the cabinets out of the room, and taking the cabinets out of the room led to replacing the tiles, and replacing the tiles led to removing the toilet, and. . .
. . . we all see where this is heading, don't we? I poked my head in the bathroom on Thursday, and all it was was four bare, plaster-patched walls and a hole in the ground. Oh, and some little plumbing shiny metal things poking out of the far wall.
It had only been a couple of months ago that she'd finished redecorating the other large bathroom down the hall in her new house. I even helped her paint.
"I asked her what she'd do when she finished redecorating all the rooms in the house," I told her husband at dinner.
Tara's mom grinned. "I told her, you start all over."
Remington flinched a bit, I think.
"You should consider yourself lucky that it's just the house she wants to remake in her image of perfection," I pointed out to Remington. "It could very well have been you that she decided to remodel."
Remington exchanged a look with his mother-in-law; the both of them grinned, a secret little grin that gives evidence that this pair, at least, are tuned into the same channel. I think the grin meant, what makes you think that she didn't? What he actually said was, "You don't think I'm perfect already?"
Anyway, Tara wanted to redecorate her bathroom. I went with her to look at things and make supremely unhelpful comments about ugly things.
That's all.
In the years between middle school and graduate school, I was a pilgrim on the great slopes of sarcasmus, a traveller over an ascending road that many disenfranchised, post-modern, disillusioned specimens of teenage-hood have hiked before me. In middle school, I could raise welts on thinner skins with a sentence. In high school, I could flay the top two epidural layers off any target in under a minute. In college, I annihilated freshmen with a choice word or even, sometimes, a blink. I was a master of the art. I shrivelled souls into tiny cumin seeds.
Until one day, when I became so sarcastic, I wasn't anymore.
I can't even remember the conversation clearly. I was talking to a freshman at the time, a cheerful youngster who really didn't know much better. It was something stupid, I think; something about the late-night cafe, which provided deep-fried everything and pizza for those who were lagging behind in gaining their freshman ten. Their daily menu consisted of cheese pizza, fried cheese sticks, french fries, and onion rings. If there happened to be anything else in the freezer, that would also be fried by request.
"Do you think they'll have french fries tonight again?" he might have asked.
"I don't think so," I might have replied. "They never serve french fries."
"That's not true," he might have argued. "They served me french fries last night."
At which point, I'm fairly sure I said, "Dude. I was being sarcastic."
Out of the entire conversation, this is the part that I remember most clearly. He looked at me with sympathy, patted me kindly on the shoulder, and said, "I'm sorry. I couldn't tell. I don't mean to hurt your feelings, but . . . you're not very good at being sarcastic, Yuhri."
Sarcasm is an art that requires a sense of the dramatic. To be successfully -- or stereotypically -- sarcastic requires an ability to overact. "Nooooo," I should have said, if I had truly thrown myself into the role. The 'O' in 'No' would have dragged out for a city block, on a descending note accompanied by a look of profound exasperation. All things are exasperating to the Sarcastic. Rolled eyes help in conveying this overwhelming annoyance with the world. "They neeeeeeeeeh-ver serve fried food."
Elongated vowels are important in sarcasm; likewise, the emphasis on negatives. Nooooooooh. Neeeeeeeeh-ver. Noooooah-t.
What happened that night opened my eyes to a whole new realm of sarcasm: the Sarcasm of the Elite, also known as "dry wit." Where sarcasm itself is the property of slovenly dressed teenagers who smoke and have poor posture, dry wit elevates one to the world of grown-ups, putting one on a level with great minds like the Algonquin Round Table.
Dry wit is when one says exactly what one would have said were one being sarcastic, only without the sarcastic tone.
For instance.
Freshman: "Do you think they're serving french fries tonight again?"
Me: "No. I don't think the cafe likes to fry things."
Freshman: "But I had french fries yesterday."
Me: "Are you sure?"
Freshman: "Like, yeee-ah-uh."
Me: "How very peculiar."
Freshman: "Were you kidding about the cafe and the frying thing?"
Me: "No."
Freshman: "You're pretty dumb for a senior, aren't you?"
The difficulty with dry wit is that occasionally, if one isn't careful, it could lead to terrible, good-intentioned mistakes being made. An unwary dry wit could get a reputation for being something of a nincompoop, particularly if said wit is in a position of power. The new Director of my college was possessed of a dry wit, which -- I'm told through the grapevine -- led to the acquisition of forty American Sign Language manuals. Apparently, someone made a sarcastic suggestion that the school teach the vocalists sign language just to get them shut up once in a while. He allegedly responded with a whimsical, "Good idea. Let's bill them to the Choral Department and call them 'Vocal Rest Facilitators.'"
I bet the Voice Faculty got the joke.