The Last Word

When I was a child, I heard my parents arguing. My father said to my mother, “You seem to need to have the last word.”

My mother retorted, “No, I don’t.”

My father looked at her momentarily, smiled, and then walked out of the room.

It was a lesson that stays with me.

OK, but what lesson are you trying to impart? I don't mean that in a snarky way, but it's not clear.

If it's about people being bullied into silence, I do get that.

I was born in late 1959, and grew up gay in America during the times that I did. In high school and college I was cool with being a guy who liked guys, but nobody else around me was ready for that, so I learned to live like a spy, even within my own family.

So, I never had the same kind of romantic and sexual interactions in high school or college in the mid/late 70s that my straight peers did (I didn't live in NYC), but on the other hand, I didn't die during the first wave of AIDS deaths.

@hakima said
My father said to my mother, “You seem to need to have the last word.”

@fmf said
On message boards like this, a rhetorical gimmick like "You can have the last word", or words to that effect, is usually a sign of someone bailing out whilst trying to preemptively devalue whatever is said next... as if the motivation is somehow not simply continuing the conversation in good faith, but is, instead, motivated by a shallower desire to simply "have the last word".

@fmf said
On message boards like this, a rhetorical gimmick like "You can have the last word", or words to that effect, is usually a sign of someone bailing out whilst trying to preemptively devalue whatever is said next... as if the motivation is somehow not simply continuing the conversation in good faith, but is, instead, motivated by a shallower desire to simply "have the last word".

It would have been interesting if it had been my mother who had stopped, smiles, and walked out of the room after my father’s comment. In fact, I wish she had.

@hakima said
It would have been interesting if it had been my mother who had stopped, smiles, and walked out of the room after my father’s comment. In fact, I wish she had.

I recall in a workplace discussion somebody said to me "you always have to have the last word". Totally surprised, I said "do I?" and everybody cracked up. It made me realise that it was true. It's a real compulsion which I have had to resist all my life. I created the first RHP "The Last Word" forum thread back in the day and discovered that a sufficiently determined person could manage it once.

These days I wouldn't attempt it, because there's someone here more determined than I ever was.

@kewpie said
I recall in a workplace discussion somebody said to me "you always have to have the last word". Totally surprised, I said "do I?" and everybody cracked up. It made me realise that it was true. It's a real compulsion which I have had to resist all my life. I created the first RHP "The Last Word" forum thread back in the day and discovered that a sufficiently determined pers ...[text shortened]... .

These days I wouldn't attempt it, because there's someone here more determined than I ever was.

@fmf said
On message boards like this, a rhetorical gimmick like "You can have the last word", or words to that effect, is usually a sign of someone bailing out whilst trying to preemptively devalue whatever is said next... as if the motivation is somehow not simply continuing the conversation in good faith, but is, instead, motivated by a shallower desire to simply "have the last word".

@fmf said
Was she more articulate and erudite than your father?

@hakima said
Sometimes.

My father used to tell my siblings and me that he ought to have sent her to law school.

Whenever he said that I would ask, “Why didn’t you?”

@fmf said
And was your “Why didn’t you?” the last word in that particular exchange?