A STUPID COLUMN
So much has been written about the so-called "dumbing down" of America. We've seen evidence of schools helping students along so they can avoid repeating classes with the result being college graduates who can't even read their professional football contracts. But enough about Green Bay.
How many of us tolerate stupidity that keeps us silently cringing and searching out the nearest exit? While I, personally, have a pet peeve about stupidity and stupid people, I still find it refreshing to occasionally encounter a certified twit to reaffirm my own superiority.
Now, before everyone marches off to their crayons and construction paper to write a letter of protest about my attitude, I'll be happy to point out that there are lots and lots of people smarter than I. For example, strike up a conversation with me about Euclidian geometry, and I'll start fading out and looking at my wristwatch right about the time the discussion turns from calculating the area of circles, squares, triangles to the beauty of parabolic curves and their correlative application in statistics. I'm not a rocket scientist or a brain surgeon, okay? But, on the other hand, I've managed to avoid nearly every Pauly Shore movie, I don't listen to Howard Stern or Mancow Muller, and I still think there are way funnier things in the world than Top Ten Lists, so neither am I a drooling idiot.
I digress. As irritating as stupid people can be, I still find myself oddly attracted to flea markets. That's right -- I go to flea markets. Now, I'm sure that most of you are pulling out your calculators and looking for the mathematical equivalence between me and a stone cold moron, but I think flea markets are healthy for all individuals of average to above-average intelligence. Not just so you can re-buy all of the things that have been stolen out of your car while it was parked downtown, either. No, if you're ever feeling depressed about yourself or your station in life, go to a flea market. I guarantee, you'll feel so much higher on the food chain by the time you get back home. Buy a Dukes of Hazzard lunch box or a velvet Elvis while you're there, and every time you look at either you can just say to yourself, "Hey, my life's not so bad! I could be at a flea market!"
Again, I digress.
I think that one of the many times my mother yanked me out of school to get a flu shot, I missed the assembly where they had the enrollment ceremony for the stupid people's fraternity.
That's the fraternity that gives stupid people carte blanch to say cretinous things to everybody. For example, when it's 12 below zero with a wind chill factor of minus 60, the stupid people fraternity has a hard and fast rule of going inside and saying to each and every person there, "Whooo! It's cold outside!"
Or every time Robin Williams plays an uncredited role in a film, members ask, "Is he in this?"
Shopping for my wife the other day, I wanted a 16-ounce bottle of lotion in a specific scent. We always buy the large sizes of everything. It's a by-product of the warehouse club mentality. Every night I drive the forklift out to the storage shed for some dishwashing detergent, and we may not have room in our garage for a car, but, dammit, that box of Kleenex Facial Tissue will never run out. Anyway, I wanted a 16-ounce bottle of skin lotion. They had 16 ounces bottles of every other scent but the one I wanted. So I asked if there was any more in the back.
The sales clerk said, "No. Why don't you just get two eight-ounce bottles?"
Rather than go into a harangue about conservation and how one empty bottle is better for the environment than two, I simplified it for her and said, "Because I want the 16-ounce bottle."
The clerk immediately assumed an expression of scholarly advice. You know the look: it's the same look the Scarecrow gets right after the Wizard hands him a diploma. She said, "Well, you know, two eight-ounce bottles give you the same amount as one 16-ounce bottle." I just stared at her, groping for the appropriate answer. She nodded her head. "It's true!" she added. My friend Shawn was with me. Thank God for Shawn. He came up with the proper response. "Stop!" he cried, grabbing the hair on the sides of his head. "Big numbers make my head swim!"
