[Courses] [Spineful Living, lesson 3: 101 Satisfying Retorts For All Occassion]

[Noirin Plunkett]

I'm *way* late to this one, but since it's not really a regular
lesson, I'll just jump in...

I find that sometimes, guys won't listen to "Grow up", or "Get a life"
- particularly if you say it to them in a conversation that just
involves you two...

I can think of two guys in particular I've had this problem with. One
was a guy I briefly, long ago, dated. Since we broke up (many years
ago), he's always been excessively explicit with me. I didn't like it,
and often told him to grow up... He'd usually clean up his act for a
week or two, and then go back to the same ol' same ol'...

Until recently, when we were attending a two-day OSS conference, at
which I knew he wanted to hook up with one of the speakers... When she
came to the pub, I introduced him to her, saying "Kate, this is Mike.
He's very nice to women he hasn't slept with yet" (names changed to
protect the innocent!)

Suffice to say, it's been two months now, and apart from some serious
whining about how I ruined his chances, he's been an absolute lamb
every since! So sometimes, you need to fight fire with fire, a little
bit =)

The other guy is a fairly bigshot techy guy, who's only in Ireland for
a year or so. I still haven't worked out how to get him to grow up,
not treat women as objects, and stop saying "but it's ok, you're
different", or "no offense! <insert offensive remark>"...

I've told him outright what I think of him - he seems to think it's
"cute". I might have to go the ickle wickle babba route... Ugh =)

Noirin