A pearoast, I think...
About 20 years ago when I was still young and happily married to Nurse Ratched, she and I were going to meet her mother for lunch. While I genuinely like Rita a lot, she always has the affect of a 1950s sitcom mother, slightly ditzy and always looking to the sunny side of everything. She's sweet, but at times a little maddening. She's a devout Catholic besides, and is very socially conservative.

At the time Nurse Ratched and I had been speculating quite a bit about her brother, who had never had a girlfriend yet seemed to always have male companions around. It seemed clear enough to me, but any reference to it in his presence would make Rick start shouting and generally being a dick. (As one of my sons put it, you are what you eat.) And he was especially rude and brusque to his mother, which she of course found upsetting.

So as we drove to the restaurant I commented that I knew exactly how the lunch conversation would go- "Now, have you spoken to Rick lately? You know, I worry about him- he never tells me anything on the phone, and he's always so abrupt. What do you think's going on with him these days?" I had heard the same conversation at least a dozen times, and could mimic her precisely.

Sure enough, within five minutes of sitting down, the conversation started down its inevitable path. When it got to "What do you think's going on with him?" I calmly replied, "We're pretty sure that Rick's gay."

Nurse Ratched almost sprayed her mother with a mouthful of gin and tonic, Rita's jaw landed in her lap, and I sat back with the satisfied glow of knowing that I had ended that particular conversation permanently and had steered it into new waters.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Sun 15 May 2011, 17:53, Reply)