Is That the Best You've Got?

Travel in a non-English speaking country has me thinking about eavesdropping, something I find--like most forbidden treats-- delicious.


Cellphones lend a particularly piquant flavor to the experience, although--like capers, I find a little goes a long way.  One day in ToyJoy, though, I heard a clerk shout into her phone, "Piss up a rope, you piker.  Go calculate your own pie charts!"  It was the end of the fall semester and I assume she spoke to a classmate and intended it literally, but I co-opted it as a metaphor and used it as a slogan for weeks. 


Cut me off in traffic?  Well, go calculate your own pie charts, you piker!   
You won't replace my stolen gym card? Go calculate your own pie charts!
Annoying telemarketer?  Why don't you go calculate your own pie charts! 


The confusion on the other person's face (or voice) is amazingly satisfying. 


Don't like my blog?  Go calculate your own pie charts!


Last Thanksgiving, at a bird sanctuary in South Padre, I overheard one woman say to another, "So I just said to him 'Is that the best you got? Because if it is, you are so totally worthless.' "  Pretending to move in for a better camera angle on the egrets, I slipped in just a little closer to hear the rest.  The other woman laughed, and the first woman, gesturing with a claw-like hand, said, "I had to tell him, 'North-south, north-south.  East-west.  Now down my spine, and don't forget my shoulder-blades.'"   She was talking about getting her back scratched.


I shared this story with my physicist, who is great with back-scratches (both giving and receiving)  but has been known to lose focus if his mind runs to the unsolved equations of transitional flows. On more than one occasion his own hand has dug hard at the same spot until I yelped. 


Now, when I can't get a response from him because he is deep in the newspaper or considering the scaling sequence of fractal patterns,  instead of saying, "What the hell is wrong with you?  Do you even know I'm here?"  I say: Is that the best you got?    


Sometimes I just whisper "North-south, north-south."  He knows what I mean.