(sarcasm karma can leave a mark)

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I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is, I bruise easily, so I know fairly quickly when I’ve done something stupid.

The bad news is, I have a boatload of bruises.

Obviously, I’m a slow learner.

Don’t misunderstand. These are not necessarily “contact injury” bruises, though as I get older I do seem to get clumsier by the week. It’s ridiculous. I’ll successfully negotiate the same bathroom light switch I’ve reached for 500 times, and then suddenly at #501, for some unexplained reason, I’ll plunge my entire forearm against the switch plate, as if my depth of field were auditioning for a Three Stooges cameo.

No, a lot of my bruises are actually the result of poor social skills. One of the first columns I ever wrote (…And Then He Hit Me, May 2009) was about tact. Well, more accurately, about why I don’t have any. And now, almost a decade on, the intricacies of tact still continue to elude me, as do many other things I still can’t figure out, like…

• how shoppers can hear “you just pay a separate fee!” and still think the second Miracle Timesaving Device is free
• why Martha Stewart went to prison, but Hillary Clinton didn’t
• what, exactly, is the appropriate amount of CoQ10
• the alleged benefits of using sea salt instead of, um, er, uh, land salt
• people who insist on posting online, all their intimate medical details, including wound snapshots, graphic photos of invasive procedures, and pix of painful, hard-to-remove objects, like carpentry nails, or in-laws
• why, after you buy something from amazon.com, you immediately see amazon.com ads on other websites for the exact same thing you just bought from amazon.com
• when telling a woman ‘you look nice today’ became cause for termination
• how many times, years from now, even after Mitch McConnell has passed on, will the voters of Kentucky continue to re-elect him
• why anyone would buy a used car from a salesman wearing light brown dress shoes
• the maximum number of Die Hard sequels allowed within a single sentient universe
• why Iceland is green and Greenland isn’t
• why, when psychotic celebrities claim with a straight face that Donald Trump personally aimed Hurricane Irma at Miami so he could get rid of brown people, the celebs aren’t immediately taken down with a safari-grade tranq dart
• eyebrow dandruff

But tact…or lack of it…is what keeps me bruised. I can’t help it. People say things, people do things, and I respond. For me, it’s an instinctive reflex, like Ella Fitzgerald scatting, or ESPN firing Asians whose names sound like Confederate generals.

I know. There is an appropriate time and place for sarcasm. I know that; we all know that. Unfortunately, I broadly define time as “anytime I’m more or less conscious” and place as “anywhere I’m more or less not trespassing.” And then, on come the bruises.

Witness:

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Last year, I was at a book signing and a guy asked me to inscribe a copy to his physical therapist. I told him he didn’t look old enough to be crazy.

And then he hit me.
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In the “Ten Items Or Less” lane at the grocery, I pointed out to the guy in front of me that stacking six six-packs three high does not, in fact, perform the mathematical miracle of reducing them to two items.

And then he hit me.
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It was that pesky reflex, I guess, that got me in trouble at the mall. I needed a cooler for the beach, and the large lady in charge of sporting goods tried to interest me in something the size of Western Europe. I said no, pointing out that I wasn’t planning to tote her to the beach.

And then she hit me.
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One of our customers, a guy from Phoenix, flew into town for a meeting. At lunch, a coworker started ragging him about the notoriously high temperatures in the Southwest. I knew what was coming next before Phoenix guy even said it. “Yeah, but it’s a dry heat.”

My coworker barked, “Aah, that’s just stupid.”

Remember, reflex. I couldn’t help myself. “Yeah, but it’s a dry stupid.”

And then they hit me.
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The, um, androgynous biped taking my order at a fast food place had several face piercings, a neck tattoo that might have been two ferrets having sex, and stringy oiled hair dyed a shade of orange usually reserved for spaghetti sauce you get out of a can. After negotiating my order, I asked for directions to the bathroom, and was rewarded with a sullen “Over there.”

Reflex kicked in. “Which one is your favorite?”

And then he or she hit me.
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Downtown, an illegal alien activist was holding a hand-painted sign, reading “IM AMERICAN IN EVERY WAY BUT ON PAPER.”

I know. I should’ve just kept walking.

“Give me your car keys.”
“Do what?” he rightfully asked.
“I own your car in every way but on paper.”

For a few seconds, there on the sidewalk, he pondered my logic. And then he hit me.
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Yep. I’m a slow learner…and I’ve got the bruises to prove it. And I was still contemplating my shortcomings when the doorbell rang. It was my Congressman, asking me to contribute to his re-election campaign, so he could rush back to Washington and fight for term limits.

And then I hit him.