Subtle is as subtle does

MY DICTIONARY DEFINES subtle as "not immediately obvious; characterized by skill or ingenuity; clever; elusive; [even] insidious. Armed with this wide-ranging description, let us look at some concrete instances of this. (The very word itself is an example, as the letter "b" is silent in pronunciation.)

Language can be straight-forward and directly to the point, but sometimes that takes the fun out of it. On occasion, at least, one appreciates subtleties--often as the mark of a quick wit. This particularly is true of jokes that generally have a double meaning. For example: A waitress received only three pennies for a tip. Nonplussed, she told the customer that those three pennies told a lot about him. He took the bait and asked what they revealed. "The first penny," she said, "tells me you are thrifty." The patron agreed. "What does the second penny say?" asked the customer. "It tells me you're a bachelor," she replied. "Right again" he agreed. "And what does the third penny tell you?"--signaling that he now had swallowed not only the bait, but the hook, fine, and sinker. "The third penny," responded the waitress, "tells me your daddy was a bachelor, too." How's that for a subtle comeuppance?

In a similar vein, a parent asked her daughter's piano teacher how the student was doing and whether it was worthwhile to continue lessons. The teacher smiled and said, "She is not without a lack of talent." Would you continue or drop the lessons? Then there was the tourist in a French restaurant who ordered a bowl of soup but found a fly in it. Searching for his long-forgotten French, he victoriously recalled "fly" as "mouche" and, motioning the waiter, "Garcon," pointed to the soup, declaring, "Le Mouche!" Said the quick-thinking waiter, "La Mouche!" The customer, not to be outdone, muttered, "My, you have darn good eyesight."

Subtleties also can be used on occasion for a good putdown. For instance, one can say a certain man was a big gun of industry. "Yes," is the counter, "he was fired several times." Bragging about a friend who was a self-made man, the remark was added by the listener that he also "adored his maker." Then there is the fellow who boasted that he always got out of bed as soon as the sun came in his bedroom window. Not to let him get away with this, an acquaintance proffered that the man's bedroom faced the west. In this category was Mark Twain's caustic time bomb: "He was a good man--in the worst sense of the term."

Upon an insufferable employee's retirement, the boss was asked to give a toast. He proferred, "As you slide down the banister of life, please remember me as a sprinter in your career." For faint praise, try this one: The system of astronomy put forth by Aristotle was a tribute to his magnificent genius. It had but a single flaw. It was wrong! The comment was offered in respect to an author's prolific books: "He writes more than he knows." One can say of a person who dominates the discussion. "He held up his end of the conversation to the point of being perpendicular."

In our day of political correctness (sometimes called the tyranny of the minority), police seldom talk about suspects, but only about "persons of interest." I guess law enforcement does not want another lawsuit on its hands. Then, too, with the campaign against fat and fried foods, Kentucky Fried Chicken calls itself KFC, figuring that few will think of "fried" that way. Likewise, Burger King used to serve a delicious fish sandwich which was designated a "Whaler." Then the hullabaloo arose about Willy the Whale and "Save the Whales" became a popular cry. It was not long before Burger King gave a new name to this great sandwich: "Big Fish." This probably is more appropriate anyway, since a whale is not a fish. Some time ago, I was introduced to a friend's fiance and complimented him by remarking that I never realized how discriminating he was. The true sense of discrimination is lost today, and probably would be misunderstood in this context.

Another cute and subtle remark was overheard at a party where a priest attended without his Roman collar. He was asked if he had any children and replied, "None to speak of." Then there were two skiers who got caught in a Swiss avalanche. Working their heads above the surface of the snow, they spied a St. Bernard dog with the traditional cask of brandy hanging from its neck. Said the one skier, "Look, here comes man's best friend." The second added, "Yes, and a dog is carrying it." The story is told of two elderly women aboard a cruise ship who went down to the bar where each ordered two shots of Scotch with a chaser of one ounce of water. "Let me get this straight," said the rather perplexed bartender. "Only one ounce of water?" "That's right" responded one of the women. "At our age, we can hold our liquor better than we can hold our water."