Say What You Mean
I was on a commuter train, reading a book. I was vaguely aware of a woman standing in the exit area of the train and a guy walking through the train, past the exit, and the woman. I heard the woman say something, but I couldn’t tell what it was. Then, I suddenly heard the guy yell, in a mildly-to-moderately inebriated voice, “WHAT? WHAT DID YOU CALL ME”?
I got up, and this 6-foot-tall trashed guy was staring down at the skinny woman, who suddenly looked like she realized she had made a mistake. As I walked over, she said, “Uh, I, I, I…I’m sorry, I didn’t mean”, and he just got madder. He yelled, “If you didn’t MEAN it, why did you say it”? Neither of them had noticed me at all.
I wasn’t big, and my martial arts training was 15 years prior, but I figured I could take a beating better than she could. So from about 10 feet away, I said, “Hey, dude, haven’t you ever said anything you didn’t really mean? I sure have. Got me fired from a job a couple of years ago”. When I started talking, he turned to me and opened his mouth to say something, but instead, he let me finish.
Unexpectedly, this turned out to be precisely the right thing to say. He immediately stood down and even apologized to the woman. When the train security guy got there, we were sitting in facing seats and exchanging stories about how we’d gotten in trouble for saying something we didn’t mean.