When I was 12, I found gold under my mother's mattress. Not real gold, of course. This was even better. I'd found dirty books: Sexual Astrology and Woman's Orgasm. Mom being Mom, she couldn't even do porn right; these were all text. Nevertheless, I knew I had the Get Out of Jail Free card of my life. I would zealously conserve this resource. I would wait until I was in serious trouble, until she caught me doing something truly heinous, and then I would toss Sexual Astrology at her face and knock her off her high ground. I trembled with excitement. I saved this for years, and then she died. My golden bullet went unfired, and now it's feeble post-introduction material.
Lesson learned. Don't hoard ammunition. Ammunition wants to be fired.
At a meeting a few weeks ago, my boss of six years was frustrated with the insubordination of one of his managers. She argued that he didn't understand her job, which he invented for her, or its responsibilities, which were also his invention. He disagreed. After several months of seeing his directives ignored, he was disinclined to do a few more laps around Retard Park. He waited for her babbling explanation to wind down, and then he spoke calmly, even kindly.
"So what I'm hearing is that you don't want to be a manager anymore."
Those 14 words were magical. The arguing immediately ceased, and the problem was forever solved.
"That. Was. AWESOME!" my buddy chatted me privately.
Indeed it was, and I could not wait to spring it on people.
"So what I'm hearing is that you don't want to be my housecleaner anymore."
"So what I'm hearing is that you don't want to be my realtor anymore."
"So what I'm hearing is that you don't want to be my mechanic anymore."
Boom. Boom. Boom. Resistance doesn't merely fade away; it disappears from all space-time. It never existed. You can almost hear the record scratch.
"I cannot wait to spring this on a girlfriend," I told Allie. I practiced: "So what I'm hearing is that you don't want to be my girlfriend anymore."
She stared at me. "Yeeeeah. I don't think that's gonna go how you think it's gonna go. She'll be, like, Oh thank god. You already understand. That'll make this so much easier!"