1. “Congrats” (or worse, “grats”).
It’s NOT the thought that counts when you can’t even be bothered to spell out the word.
2. “Y’all” and “all y’all”
ESPECIALLY atrocious when the former is used to refer to just one person. Please secede, Texas. I really thought electing a black president would push you over the edge, but it hasn’t. What must we do? Tell us!
3. LOL
…But only because I’ve been known to accidentally slip this one into conversation. The Internet has destroyed my brain (videLolcats).
…And of course:
4. Any substitution of a letter or number for a word
U r dead 2 me.
Some abbreviations I love, for good measure: any and all Latin abbreviations (i.e., e.g., N.B., vs., etc.), esp. (for especially) and “WTF”.
After posting God Never Promised You a Wife… Probably Because You’re a Creepy Loser I expected (and looked forward to) a rebuttal. I hoped that in all the huffing and puffing some original insult would emerge (other than the predictable and condescending “I’m praying for you” and attempts to discredit me intellectually by throwing out a random sampling of logical fallacies).
I got my wish. Sort of. He called me a college drop-out (actually, in his words, “an [sic] college drop-out”). College. Drop. Out. That’s it. He has access to my entire blog, filled to the brim with confessions of crippling depression, undiagnosed neuroses, and probably countless typos, and the very worst, most cutting thing he can come up with is a statement of fact. Megan, mean Megan, hell-bound Megan, sarcastic, vile, cruel, hateful Megan spewing venom and bile (his friend is a little more creative with the insults), is a college drop-out. Cut out my heart and wring it dry!
Sun Tsu said, Know Thy Enemy (paraphrase alert!), and I’m pretty sure I have mine pegged, so here’s a little cheat-sheet to level the playing field. (I LOVE LISTS!)
How to Properly Insult a Megsie
1. Call me a failure. Once a professor wrote, “I know you can do better” on a paper which she gave an A-minus to. It still haunts me to this day. That was the semester when I was failing all my classes (even though I had solid A’s on the essays and tests) because I was so depressed I stopped going to school. That is why I’m a college drop-out. I made a choice between my emotional and physical well-being and grinding out another year of school, or, (more likely) ending up in the hospital again, or worse yet, not surviving. So yes, college drop-out it is.
2. Laugh at a spelling error or misused word. This is by far the quickest way to make me cry. I once sobbed into a toilet in a restaurant bathroom because a friend (now former) mocked me for a solid twenty minutes (in front of other friends) for using the word “stupider” instead of “more stupid” in casual conversation. She even went so far as to outright say that I was stupid for saying it. (I still maintain that it SHOULD be a word – it fits the form of the language!)
3. Insult my large hands or feet. I KNOW they are elephantine, you do not have to tell me! Nevertheless, many people have felt the urge to point this out to me, usually coinciding with a day where I had decided that I do not actually look like an ugly, overgrown ogress, making the inevitable fall that much harder. Goodbye, self-esteem.
4. Call me a Shrew (as in “the Taming of”). My father called me this because he knew it rankled me. What followed was, inevitably, a lecture about how I would only get a man if I conformed to the sort of misguided, misogynistic ideals spouted by religious fundamentalists. (Hey, guess what! I did get a boyfriend. He says I’m fiesty! Suck. It.)
5. Say, “oh, you were home-schooled? That explains so much”. I spent all of my teenage years among home-schoolers being ridiculed by them for being different. I didn’t think like them, I didn’t dress like them, and I didn’t talk like them – or so I was told. Yet I apparently wasn’t different, at least, not very. Not different enough. (I’m still pretty sure that my social awkwardness had a lot more to do with me being introverted, shy and a misanthropic bitter shrew than with being home-schooled).
There are many more, I’m sure. I’m a delicate flower, really.