The flight to New York was uneventful. My plane landed on time, and my luggage arrived intact. All was well with the world, until I hopped into a taxi driven by Mohammad. “This should go well,” I thought. “The man is named after a religious leader. How bad could it be?” I told him the name of my hotel, and he slammed his foot on the gas pedal, and we took off like a drunken bat out of Hell.
As we wove in and out of rush hour traffic on the expressway, Mohammad discovered that his emergency light was blinking. “How do you turn this thing off?” he asked. “I assume there’s a switch somewhere,” I replied, as I got off the car floor and climbed back into my seat. “No switch,” he said. “Maybe it’s near the dashboard,” I replied. At that, my driver disappeared, as his head went under the dashboard. All I saw was his hands on the steering wheel. “Mohammad, come back to me,” I yelled. “You can fix the light when we get to the hotel.” He brought his head back out of his lap, but by now drivers all around us were honking and pointing to the blinking light.
Mohammad lowered his window and started shouting insults about mothers and camels and excrement, while the wind whipped my coiffure into my eyes. Finally, he slammed on the brakes, and deposited me, and my suitcase, at the rear entrance of the hotel, where I promptly got stuck in the revolving door.
Sigmund Freud said, “The first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone was the founder of civilization.” Freud was right. A colorful characterization is so much better than hitting someone in the head with a stone. There is nothing more descriptive than:
“He is having an identity problem trying to join the human race.”
“She needs a personality makeover.”
“He doesn’t have to say, ‘I don’t know,” because you know he doesn’t.”’
“She thinks she can save the world one light bulb at a time, and she is a few bulbs short.”
“She says she changed her mind, but I don’t know what she changed it into.”
I particularly enjoy the colorful language of regional put-downs:
“He’s all hat and no cattle.”
“She’s a taco short of a combination plate.”
“He’s all foam without the beer.”
“She’s the dimmest bulb in the chandelier.”
Of course classic insults said by famous people have become an entertaining footnote to history:
“He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends.” (Oscar Wilde)
“He has Van Gogh’s ear for music.” (Billy Wilder)
“He has all the virtues I dislike, and none of the vices I admire.” (Winston Churchill)
I forgot to mention that I was stuck in that hotel revolving door with my suitcase, because a man in a hurry was pushing the merry-go-round door in the opposite direction, as I was trying to enter. When he finally stopped pushing, and let me come around, I looked at him and said, “You are a camel.” “No, Lady,” he replied, “I’m from Connecticut.” I’m not sure he got it. Sorry, Mohammed.
Esther Blumenfeld (“Wisdom hurts.” Euripedes)