Patronizing and dinner

I am one of those people like George from Seinfeld who obsess about comebacks.

When I run in the morning, when I’m on the bus, when I am cooking…I find my mind wanders to the near past. I replay my recent brush with various insults, and then I devise clever, elegant-yet-forceful ways of overcoming my humiliation. In these fantasies of mine, I am so charismatic that my enemies are left with one of two choices: spontaneous combustion or apology. Sometimes, when I am really furious, I make them apologize AND spontaneously combust. *sigh* That feels very good. Then I normally notice that I’ve begun to burn dinner.

Anyway, about ten years ago I was doing a design job for a well known Swiss watch company. I was totally bottom of the food chain though, and my ‘boss’ made sure I noticed. After the job was done, I came round her office for a summing-up meeting. I was wearing a suite, my hair was tied neatly back. I entered her room with a graceful confidence. And then she said something which I will never forget:
‘Did you run?’
Now, with these three words, she had reduced my whole pose of professionalness to nothing. I was instantly turned into a panting, anxious inferior mess. She was a master of manipulation, an artist of patronizing.
For about 6 moths I obsessed about this incident. I thought over and over what my response should have been. If I would have said ‘No’ then I’d be denying that I ran. My comeback would be too defensive. Who cares if I ran? Only someone who is anxious would be anxious to hide the fact they ran to a meeting. If I would have tried something like ‘no, did you?’ I would have just looked pathetic. If I said something like ‘do I look like I ran?’ then I risk a response – which could very well be ‘Yes, you do’ and so we are back to square one.
Now, after months of this going over and over through my mind, I decided that in some cases there IS NO COMEBACK. The best you can do is just learn from this how to patronize someone else if you ever need to.

But now that I am older and in no way wiser, I have figured out the correct response
to ‘Did you run?’

The answer is ‘Yes’.

Why?
Because patronizing works by laying its own groundwork. You are tossed a proverbial ball which you are in fact NOT MEANT TO CATCH and this is what makes you look and feel small. BUT, if you catch the ball then the game is just beginning. By answering ‘Yes’ (when we both know I didn’t run but walked in calmly), it means that I have caught the ball and now it’s my turn to throw it.

Now that I have figured this out, I can relax and cook dinner.
Just thought I'd share.