It takes a quick thinker to bring forth a "squelch" in time of need. The "squelch", of course, is the put-down of someone commenting unfavorably on you or whatever you happen to be doing. They are especially handy for performers dealing with audience hecklers.
For example, I remember a stand-up comedian who told me once that he had a surefire way of squelching a drunk during his nightclub act. He would signal for an off-stage phone to ring, then pretend to answer it, then turn to the heckler and say, "Pardon me,sir, it's your doctor. He says your spare mouth is ready!"
Singer Bobby Vincent once scored by telling a loud talker during his monologue, 'You, sir, could never be a donor in a brain transplant."
Old-time comedian Milton Berle was a master at this art. He once quieted a ringside woman with a loud voice by pointing her out and remarking, "You did the same thing to me in 1946. I never forget a dress."
I personally experienced my first squelch as a youngster at home. I had expressed some disinterest in doing some chores I had been assigned. by my mother. So my dad added, "We think it's a very good idea, and so do I." It was an interesting way for him to announce that mom ran the household and to correct my mistake in thinking I had a say in the matter.
Perhaps the commonest form of squelch is the mere sneering answer to a dumb question. A lady I knew got tired of people asking if she was pregnant. So she started answering with, "No, I'm just carrying it around for a friend." Her husband was just as quick-witted. He was talking about a fishing trip with a friend when a third party joined them, asking, " Did you catch some fish?" His repartee: "No, they gave themselves up."
Those aren't zingers, of course, but they get the idea across. Just as one-time artist Georgia O'Keeffe did during what she considered a time consuming interview. The interviewer asked what she was working on at the moment. "Nothing," she snapped in resentment against interference with her work, "because I'm talking to you."
What is interesting to me is that you can't tell a good squelcher from appearances. Take the farmer, dirtied from working all day, who dropped tiredly into a chair at a local diner. After being served, he quietly bowed his head and said grace. One of a group of young roisterers at another table loudly asked him, "Hey, pop, does everyone do that where you come from?" The old man looked sadly at him and replied, "Nope, son, the pigs don't."
Then there was a professor of anatomy who (I've been told) told racy stories during class, which caused consternation among some of the coeds. A group of them got together and decided they would get up and leave the room en mass the next time he did that. Someone squaled on them, however.
So, next class, halfway through his lecture, he began, "They say there is quite a shortage of prostitutes in France___", at which those girls got up and started for the door.
"Young ladies,"called the professor, "the next plane doesn't leave until tomorrow afternoon."
One-time cartoonist Al Capp was well paid to tour college campuses and talk to aspiring artists, where occasionally some wanna-be artist would make denigrating remarks about cartoonists not being real artists.
One such went so far as to use an obscenity in his exclamation, to which Capp replied, "All right, you've told us your name. Now what is your question?"
Now we get to my two favorites, the first attributed to one-time British prime minister Winson Churchill. Of one contemporary his summation was, "There, but for the grace of God, goes God."
Whitney Young, Jr., when executive of the National Urban League some years ago, arrived at New York 's Kennedy Airport and went in search of a Skycap to handle his luggage. When he found one, a black man, he asked, "Are you free?"
"No, I'm not," was the reply, "but I'm working on it."
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