Clever Put Downs for Braggarts

 July Retirement Sparks

Certain put downs are great to use against those who are known to be braggarts. Two of my favorites show up regularly on TV. One is appropriate for putting a man in his place. The other is good for insulting a woman. I’ve been on the lookout for more memorable ones, but to no avail. So I’ve made up some of my own for this post. Usually I like to save the best for last, but in the case I’m starting with the ones you’ve probably already seen. They’re far better than my own.

 

Tell a man he’s all hat and no cattle and you’ve really put him in his place. You’ve no doubt seen these wanna-be ranchers with cowboy hats the size of Texas. Many of them don’t have any cattle on their land, if they even have any land.

 

Roger Moore landed a well-placed insult on a snooty woman in a Hallmark movie by telling her she was all fur coat and no knickers. I just love that one! And you know it had to come from a Brit!

 

That’s the end of the ones I found on line. The rest are ones I made up.

Picking up on the hat and cattle theme, tell a man he’s all Dan Post boots but no saddle. Dan Post boots have been described as “the most comfortable experience in western footwear.” Or you can upgrade your insult slightly by saying he’s got a tooled leather saddle but no horse. In the same Western vein, say he wears a fringed suede jacket over cotton boxer shorts. Now there’s a put down worth filing away.

 

You can insult older women by telling them they have a hand-carved Mahjong board but no tiles. Or tell a younger ballerina wannabe she’s all tutu and no ballet shoes. A woman of any age is likely to brag about her recently acquired diamond engagement ring, telling everyone it’s 4 carats. Research indicates that 2.5 carats is the usual maximum to be had at retail these days. Then there’s the fact several years later that the woman is all engagement ring and no wedding band. That makes a good insult.

 

Following on that theme, a bragging woman of any age will gladly show off her Orbit baby stroller as she pushes it around the neighborhood. But she never seems to have a baby in it. Telling her she’s all buggy and no bambino is a perfect put down. That’s even better than all fur coat and no knickers. Or all hat and no cattle. When she finally does have a baby, you can be quite certain that the little one will be clad in brands like Burberry and Hanna Andersson. Or at least that’s what the mother will claim.

 

One brag that is often well hidden is the Keurig K-Supreme coffee maker that has no pods in the owner’s home. She spent the entire budget on the machine and had nothing left to buy supplies. So when people visit they see the fancy machine but are never offered a cup of coffee. Tell the host she’s an empty pot with nothing brewing.

 

Men of any age who golf will gladly watch their automatic golf cart wheel itself around the course, even if they don’t own a single golf club and have to rent them. All golf cart and no clubs makes a great put down.

 

You can insult men and women of any age if they wear a Rolex band on a Timex watch. This type of a braggart always wears the face of the watch on the inside of his wrist where folks almost never see it. So they assume the watch is also a Rolex and not just the band.

 

Women who want to seem young and funky may prance around in baby doll PJs. They may be bragging about their youthful figures or how much energy they have. No matter what, they are certain to grab attention and very likely some put downs, too. Call them granny doll pajamas for the ultimate insult.

 

Finally, some artistic and buff folks have their upper bodies tattooed with full sleeves and more. I‘m not really sure how to turn this into a put down. Perhaps tell them you love the fit of their spandex top and wish you could pull it off with your body. Or compliment their choice of ink and tats if you think they’ll get the satire.

 

Copyright 2025 Business Theatre Unlimited

 

Elaine M. Decker’s books include Retirement Downsizing—A Humorous Guide, Retirement Sparks, Retirement Sparks Again, Retirement Sparks Redux and CANCER: A Coping Guide. Her essays appear in the anthologies: 80 Things To Do When You Turn 80 and 70 Things To Do When You Turn 70. All are available on Amazon.com. Contac

Life Hacks for Senior Women

June Retirement Sparks 

The older I get, the more I appreciate the hacks that make my daily life easier. I’ve started collecting them in one place so that I can share some of them with you. The ones you’ll see here will be especially helpful for senior women. Most of them come from my personal experience.

 

My balance continues to deteriorate. Sometimes I use a walker, even at home. A shopping cart serves a similar purpose when I go to the store for groceries, which I still do. A lot of my peers have their food delivered. I like to cruise the aisles and especially the produce sections to see what catches my eye and also to see what items are new or on special.

 

 I’ve found that the safest way for me to walk without an aid is to waddle from side to side. I call it my “wobble waddle.” I feel safer and more in control when I walk this way. It’s the walk I use at night when I make one of my frequent trips to the bathroom in the wee hours. My waddle helps me prevent making a piddle puddle on the way to the john.

 

Some of these hacks are ones you should become familiar with even before you actually need them. No one gave me a heads up on this and now I struggle with some of them. In particular, I’m referring to my toenails. I assumed that as long as I could still reach my toes, their nails would not be a problem. I was wrong. Even though my house shoes aren’t confining, my toenails seem to be becoming ingrown. I struggle to trim them and often rely on filing their edges instead. I need to find a local podiatrist, but that’s just one more thing on my medical to-do list. I wish I’d taken care of this much sooner.

 

Another personal care routine that’s become more difficult as I’ve aged is plucking the goat hairs on my chin. My fingers aren’t as dexterous as they used to be and my eyesight has become weaker. I have difficulty seeing those little white hairs. I’ve thought of a great solution but have yet to implement it. It’s based on the book club concept that’s popular among women these days. Simply collect a group of women who agree to help one another pluck their goat hairs as they grow. You could call the club “Grandmother Pluckers!” In the meantime, I’ve been using a small, battery-powered shaving wand that I found in the local drug store in the “As seen on TV section.”

 

I watch a lot of Hallmark romantic comedies. I’ve noticed that the female leads often wear silk blouses or tunics, usually with jeans. They all wear them in a specific way. The front of the top is tucked neatly into the waistband. But the back is left out completely. It’s an interesting look and I’ve recently learned there is actually a name for it. It’s called a “French tuck.” Leave it to the French to come up with something this stylish and sensible. The back of your blouse almost always comes untucked anyhow. Why not just start out with it that way?

 

Let’s face it. A lot of good things come from the French, especially if we’re talking style. When it comes to hair, we have the French twist and French braids. These aren’t easy to do on your own, so best to find a hair styling partner. You can’t dress French without a beret. But to be truly French, you need a striped top, called a "marinière." You might as well throw in a red scarf for good measure. You can’t find a much easier hack than that. Even senior women can pull that look off!

 

Copyright 2025 Business Theatre Unlimited

 

Elaine M. Decker’s books include Retirement Downsizing—A Humorous Guide, Retirement Sparks, Retirement Sparks Again, Retirement Sparks Redux and CANCER: A Coping Guide. Her essays appear in the anthologies: 80 Things To Do When You Turn 80 and 70 Things To Do When You Turn 70. All are available on Amazon.com. Contact her at: emdecker@ix.netcom.com

 

Random Musings

 May Retirement Sparks

Some of you may remember the sketch Deep Thoughts with Jack Handey on Saturday Night Live. That spoof inspired my column for this month: Random Musings. I’ve reached the age when I lie awake at night musing about all sorts of random topics. I’ve collected some of them for this essay, randomly, of course.

 

The other evening I was struggling to decide if it’s a kerfuffle or a kerfluffle. My bedtime brain doesn’t have spellcheck, so I didn’t know that Word would underline kerfluffle in red. I can see that now, but I’ve already moved on to other musings.

 

I’m aware that the animal known as the ship of the desert is the camel, but isn’t that usually depicted with one hump? That would make it a dromedary. The ship needs two humps to be called a camel. This of course means that the cigarette brand of that name actually has a dromedary on the package. You probably knew this already.

 

Moving right along… is the Hokey Pokey really “what it’s all about”? And if so, why? And can’t words really hurt as much as sticks and stones?

 

Who decided there would only be two choices in winter hand coverings—mittens and five-finger gloves? Why isn’t there an option with three channels—thumb, index and middle finger together, and the two smallest fingers together? Or thumb, index finger, and the last three fingers together?

 

Why do we assume that the first one to smell it did it?

 

I wonder if the estates of the four female leads in The Golden Girls get residuals for all those reruns on the Hallmark channel. I’ve watched some of them multiple times. The show is on just about every day, even more often than Murder She Wrote, and that series has just one female lead who would be entitled to residuals.

 

I’m only half way through this and you should already be able to see how truly random my musings are. And this is even without a glass of wine.

 

Eggs are sold by the dozen. Golf balls are sold that way, too. Muffin tins have twelve compartments. So why do we rate things on a scale of one to ten? What’s worse, sometimes one is the best rating and sometimes ten is. Bo Derek was a 10 in the movie of that name. Best In Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Competition is always the number 1 dog. It’s all so confusing.

 

We hear a lot about AI now. It usually means Artificial Intelligence. With all my aches and pains, it’s more likely to mean the generics Acetaminophen and Ibuprofen for me. And my chronic cough means CVS texts me automatic refill notices for my Albuterol Inhaler.  Artificial Intelligence will have to wait a long time before that’s what I think of first when I hear AI.

 

I lost all my hair after my chemo treatments last spring. It grew back in white and straight and after a few weeks, I looked like Yahya Sinwar, the late Hamas leader who was in the news at that time. As my hair grew in more, I thought I looked like a human cotton swab. Now my hair has grown a lot and it’s curly. (It used to be straight.) My current look is very Harpo Marx. I’ll get it trimmed back to cotton swab length soon.

 

My husband and I never had children, but we each have siblings, so we live vicariously through our nieces and nephews. People talk about grandparents and great grandparents all the time, but we seldom hear about grandaunts or great grandaunts. Grandaunt will show up if you search the term, but almost no one uses it. I found this explanation helpful. “Grand” indicates one generation away; “great” is added to indicate generations beyond “grand.” Most of my nieces and nephews keep things simple and just call me “Aunt E.”

 

I don’t understand the reasoning behind the kerfuffle over football’s “Tush Push.” I have to do a tush push every time I put on a pair of French cut underpants. And a major push trying to get in and out of leotards. They should call that activity the “thigh pry.”

 

I’m pretty much randomed out. I hope you’ve enjoyed musing along with me.

 

Copyright 2025 Business Theatre Unlimited

 

Elaine M. Decker’s books include Retirement Downsizing—A Humorous Guide, Retirement Sparks, Retirement Sparks Again, Retirement Sparks Redux and CANCER: A Coping Guide. Her essays appear in the anthologies: 80 Things To Do When You Turn 80 and 70 Things To Do When You Turn 70. All are available on Amazon.com. Contact her at: emdecker@ix.netcom.com

 

Forget About Your BMI

April 2025 Retirement Sparks 

We’re used to hearing the medical community talk about our BMI (Body Mass Index) as a way to determine if we’re obese.  The BMI uses body fat to measure body mass, which has long been the standard way to decide if someone is obese. A BMI of 40 or over gets you labeled clinically obese; 25-40 makes you pre-clinical. Good news! You can now forget about your BMI. There are other things to worry about regarding whether you are unhealthy. Weight, measurements and ratios are just some of them. This could get complicated, so you should probably take notes.

 

Medical journals report that if a woman’s waist is more than 34.6 inches or a man’s is at least 40 inches, they most likely have too much fat. Other measures used are waist-to-hip ratios and waist-to-height ratios. The latest articles on this subject tell us that many medical professionals now recommend tracking adiposity, or the accumulation of body fat, along with height, weight, blood pressure and other key metrics as a more accurate way of capturing health than BMI. Track adiposity? I can barely pronounce it, much less know exactly what it means. Doctor Leana Wen wrote an article on this in March 2025.

 

Even if you have a lower BMI, many doctors suggest getting a body composition scan like a DEXA (dual X-ray absorptiometry). The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology journal once recommended focusing on 18 medical conditions caused by obesity such as the usual pains and poorly functioning organs. At my age I have enough lists to keep track of without adding a list of medical conditions that I should be keeping track of. I certainly can’t be expected to remember what a DEXA is unless I write it down in my day planner. And what am I supposed to do with this scan once I have it?

 

I have a simpler way for you to decide if you’re too fat. But first, some back story. In 2011 I blogged about a report that fat is good sometimes. The study was conducted by a team of mostly Canadian scientists and used the more comprehensive Edmonton Obesity Staging System (EOSS) which was published in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition and Metabolism. It showed that under certain conditions, people who are obese are actually less likely to die of cardiovascular causes than skinny folks.

 

To qualify for the study, the chubby folks had to have been less obsessed with losing weight than the lean folks. That is, they would have tried less often throughout their lives to lose weight. The pleasingly plump also had to have no serious “physical, psychological or physiological impairments.” (I’d love to know how that was judged in 2011.)

 

Apparently, being content with ones body, even if it was carrying a few more pounds than ideal, meant that these subjects were likely to have a healthy lifestyle. That translated into being physically active and eating healthy food. (And I’d definitely like to know how those criteria were decided on.)

 

The EOSS classified but the report did not itemize five stages of obesity. I’ve developed my own system to determine obesity levels. First you need to answer these questions. The more questions you say ‘yes’ to, the higher the stage you’re in.

·      Did everyone pinch your cheeks when you were a baby?

·      Is there any part of you that doesn’t shake when you walk?

·      Do your friends ask you if you forget your Spanx, or if that’s a seriously out of control muffin top?

·      Does your muffin top have love handles?

·      Do your love handles have muffin tops?

·      When you’re taking group photos, do you look for someone even fatter than you are to sit next to? (Especially useful at class reunions.)

 

If you answered ‘yes’ to at least three of these, you should move on to my acid test for the highest stage of obesity. Or, you can go straight to this test without even answering the questions.

 

You fill a bathtub to the brim with water and plop your body into it. If the water that overflows takes more rolls of paper towels to mop it up than you got on sale at Costco last month, you’re probably clinically obese.

 

My acid test is much easier than trying to understand all the medical jargon and tests. You can thank me after you’ve finished mopping up.

 

Copyright 2025 Business Theatre Unlimited