Her comment didn’t just sting me. Jellyfishers have a way of making us doubt ourselves or feel just plain stupid.
That’s the way I felt when my cousin Julie tripped up the stairs to my apartment after seeing my newest purchase, a green Toyota Tercel. Almost immediately, she told me that she and her husband had taken the exact same model for a test drive and found that it was “slow on pickup.”
“Was that your experience?” she asked me innocently.
At that point, I felt like strapping her into my new car and pummeling down the highway at ninety miles an hour. Risking a ticket would have been worth it, to scare the crap out of her and wipe that smug look off her face.
Jellyfishers will always be around in dark waters to sting us with their tentacles. The only way to handle them is to look them in the eye and say something completely disarming in return, such as “Thanks. Hope you feel better now.”
Another option, I suppose, is to avoid them completely as they wash up on the shore, and wait until the tide sweeps them away again.
Do you have tried-and-true retorts for women who try to beat you down with snotty words or catty comments?
By Jennifer Lubell
