How to Say No

Do you ever get asked to do things that, frankly, you just don’t want to do? If you answered that question with a “no,” keep surfing. For the rest of you normal people, I’ve come up with a few suggestions on how to say "no." You will have to figure out for yourself when and where to apply my time-tested strategies.

Don’t lie about it. Just say “no”.

Say “no” but soften it with a “white lie.” Anyone who says they never do this is lying. And it isn’t even white.

Feign deafness.

Feign blindness. (Gets you out of a lot of stuff…)

Say “yes.” Especially useful when caught off guard. Go home. Think about it. Call back and say “no.” These things are always easier over the phone. Use one of the four techniques described above.

Say “no” but come up with an alternate solution to help the person making the request. Probably the gold standard in the art of saying "no".


Convince them they can do it on their own. (Doesn’t work when kids ask you for money or fever medication….)

Reply with an equal but opposite counter-request. (e.g. I will help you build your dog house, if you will help you me replace the roof on my cottage – hope you don’t mind doing it in June even if the flies are a tiny bit bad then… Most likely to be successful if your request is far more burdensome)

Say “Shhhh”. Pretend you are listening for a burglar. Indicate that you just “heard something” outside the window. This only works at night.

Walk away distractedly. If pursued mumble something about “those voices in my head.”

Carry around business cards that say, “Director, Just Say No Program.” Hand out liberally.

Defer your answer – maybe you want to say “yes” after you think about it. (especially useful with kids, if your first inclination is to say, “Oh-my-God-NO-are-you-crazy-have-I-taught-you-NOTHING???!!” There is an outside chance, very small, that you could be over-reacting.)

Advise them to call 1-800-NOT-EVER. Their hotline will take care of it for you. There is a small monthly fee for the subscription. Well worth it.

Say “yes” and then clearly illustrate your incompetence. “Sure, I’ll look after your dog! Don’t worry about the last five dogs that ran away. Two of them eventually came back. One was even alive…”

Wear a button that says “NO!” If people ignore it, show them how sharp the pin is. (Caution – “show” them only.)

Defer the request. Check with others in the group who supposedly said “yes” to the proposal. Chances are half didn’t and the other half won’t show up. Applies mostly to parents and events that take place very early in the morning. Give in to peer pressure. Ask yourself: what would other parents do?

Say “yes” and feebly mention that you will help as “soon as you can manage”. Keep crutches in plain view or wear an eye patch. Works especially well with bosses who are afraid of unions.

Slip out the back, Jack, Make a new plan Stan… (it worked for Paul Simon…)

Gotta Love Those Earworms

Okay, it sounds more disgusting than it really is. They finally came up with a name for those maddening tunes that get stuck in your head and play over and over (and over and over…). They’re called earworms. They come knocking on the door of your brain completely unbidden: Jesus Christ, Sooooperstar, do yoooouu think you’re what they saaaaay you arrrre? If you weren’t around in the early ‘70’s that might not set one off in your brain, but if you’ve ever owned that album you are now doomed for the rest of the day. And if you’re like me, it will tap you on the shoulder in the middle of the night to remind you that it’s not quite finished with you just yet. It will override an iPod plugged directly into your brain, and it will make you go around humming that brief set of notes until your family starts considering stoning you with the leftover pork chops.

How did they come up with the term “earworm”? Just like so many other interesting English words we borrowed it from the ever clever Germans. They use Ohrwurm to describe this distressing bug in the head. From there it’s a short leap to “earworm.” Even though the term is not at all accurate – the tune is in your brain, not your ear, and there is, thankfully, no worm – it says it all. In reality, it’s just a bunch of intractable synapses having it off with you. Still, the term earworm perfectly nails the process.

Earworms are vile creatures. They play only a tiny portion of a song in an endless loop of brain-eating repetition. At the neurological level the needle on the tone-arm of your brain has gotten stuck in a groove. It can advance no further into the song. The harder you try to drive the fragment to the end, the more resistant it becomes.

Some musical artists are more talented than others at spawning earworms. Pretty much anything by Stevie Wonder will set one off. There is soooperstition, writing’s on the waaaaaalll. The overly catchy tune written for Canada’s 1967 Centennial is especially dangerous: Caaaaa-naaaa-daaaa, one-little, two-little, three Canaaaaadians… That one wormed out in my head for so long that it eroded down into my eye socket and caused era-realted hallucinations - mainly Pierre Elliot Trudeau caricatures. TV commercials finally dethroned it in 1971 by convincing me that I’d like to teach the woooorld to sing, in perfect har-moo-nnyyyy…setting me off on a Coca-Cola buying frenzy.

Sometimes new earworms set up shop in the middle of the night. One minute I am sleeping peacefully, the next I am wide awake and listening to an internal version of Hey Jude…but only the first eight bars. At times earworms even become adulterated. I have been tortured by the alternate Hey Jude lyrics a classmate once wrote: Hey Jude, don’t take it baaad, take a maaaad hog, and knit a sweater… So, so, SO much worse than the original!

So what can you do when you are infected by an earworm? Should you take an Aspirin? Stuff your head under a pillow? Crack yourself over the head with a baseball bat? Place your head in the vice in the workshop and squeeze until the worm pops out? Trust me. None of these work. Save yourself the bother. The only way to de-worm yourself is to find a recording of the song and play it. Somehow this satisfies the ear worm, integrating it back into its source. It nestles back into the song instead of bristling in your brain. Your head becomes clear again, and like a dog on his way home from the vet, you are blessedly worm-free. That is… until you encounter a Stevie Wonder song or one of those patriotic tunes crafted to inspire the war torn masses. It’s a long way to Tipp-errrr-arrrr-yyyy…