What You Wish You’d Said: The Power of a Great Comeback Line
My nephew Noah had a classmate in seventh grade who mocked him for being short. One day he came up to Noah after lunch and crouched down, as if he were trying to make himself the same height. “Is this what you see down here?" he teased.
Noah paused, struggling for words. Then he replied: Bend down a little lower and kiss my rear end. Bet there are times you wish you had a line like that.
There’s an art to the comeback line. The best ones put the offender on notice and allow us to stand up for ourselves or someone else. “A good comeback line rebalances the power in the conversation," says Selena Rezvani, a leadership consultant in Philadelphia who teaches conversational skills.
“It allows us to be hard on the problem but respectful of the person." Comeback lines can be tough to come up with in the moment, though. I typically come up with mine days later in the shower. Thinking on our feet is hard, especially when someone has insulted or offended us.
We freeze, psychologists say, because our brain perceives cutting remarks as a threat, which activates our stress response. It can be good to pause, rather than blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. But often we want to answer an affront.
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