One-Word Commands

Here's a little humor courtesy of Tanya Faw, the longtime advertising manager of Rock & Ice:

A man and a woman are out cragging, and it's obvious that they, like many couples, do not climb well together. He keeps lecturing her, she takes it badly, and their arguments can be heard up and down the cliff. One of the things he keeps harping on is that she needs to use shorter climbing commands. "Don't say, 'Give me some more rope,'" he instructs. "Say, 'Slack!'" Or: "Don't tell me to, 'Pull in the damn rope,' because I might not hear you. You should say, 'Up rope!'" So he leads a long pitch and she starts following, and it's one of those days, with the wind blowing, when he can't hear anything but everyone else at the crag can hear every word each of them is screaming. She's trying to clean a stuck piece, and he keeps shouting helpful hints like, "What the hell is taking you so long?" She yells, "I can't get your goddamned piece out," but all he hears is, "I cant...damned...shout."

"One-word comands!" he yells to her. "One-word commands!"

Climbers all along the cliff listen as she loudly and precisely enunciates her next command: "Fuck.......... You!"