Human Stupidity

For anyone who has ever underestimated the extreme levels of human stupidity I must share the pain inflicted upon me during my precious time with a co-worker. Before I start I must set the scene, all of these extremely intelligent, highly astute questions were asked by a 21 year-old college student who only attends private schools (elementary, high school and college, which only adds to the debate that public school is the way to go!). These questions were asked on different occasions, all luckily towards me, because everyone knows how much I love stupidity! So here it is:

- "Can you drive to Portugal?"
But of course, I normally just swim over, but if the gas prices are low I simply fill 'er up and go on my merry way.

- "Is Europe near South America?
Yes, obviously, I skip over to Peru every weekend just for the hell of it.

- Quickly followed by: "Well, is Ecuador near Portugal?
Yes, one is inside the other as a matter of fact.

- "If American money is only used in the US how do you buy stuff in other countries?
Before coming back with a smart retort I spent about 20 minutes attempting to explain currency, but alas it was energy wasted. So someone did me the favor and ingeniously answered this one for me, well with beads and feathers of course.

- "Is Egypt normal? You know, are there cities, and stores, and buildings like here?"
I quote my answer to that "No, there is so much sand over there that they have to make holes in the sand and live in it." Unfortunately I underestimated the level of stupidity and heard this in response "Ohhhh, okay."

The first few times I heard inane questions fly out of her mouth it pained me that someone could be so obtuse. Then I simply decided that I could get a few laughs out of it. I still wonder how she has made it this far in life, but hey I guess stupid people have the right to live too, pause not...


(Note: Yes this happened in America, but I am highly offended by those who state that all Americans are stupid. That is very untrue, I do agree that stupidity is rampant in the country, but it is not general, there are many highly intelligent people as well. I am not stupid, quite the contrary, and take high offense to anyone who would include me in any generalizations.)

White Christmas, what is that???

Well, this blog seemed to have quite a few more entries when I had a million things to do. Now that I have endless free time (well this endless time is normally cut short by this strange thing called a clock, for some reason it deems it necessary to reach 23:59 and then start all over again) I seem to have no time to find anything mildly interesting or witty to say. Well moving on from my depressing, deranged and oh so lost life, on to my depressing, deranged, and oh so lost holidays! I went back to my homeland yet another nerve-racking, stress-filled, simply joyful family holiday. It took me about 2 minutes in the Lisbon airport before I was wondering why I had decided to take on such a task, especially without any morphine to numb the pain. Yet on to the point of this rant: the lack of white stuff falling from the sky. What I was most disappointed in was not receiving a visit from my friend Mr. Snow. What is Christmas without snow??? The song does go “I’m dreamin’ of a white Christmas,” so where was the white? Does snow now also take a vacation? I want those great Christmases when it was nice and chilly, which did not keep me from having my frozen nose against the window, waiting to see Santa’s sleigh, only breaking contact for that quick run to the fireplace to find a moment of warmth. When everyone stayed awake and actually opened gifts at midnight and was joyful through it all. Instead Christmas entailed a quick dinner, after which some went to sleep, others played computer games and the rest watched bad tv. So at about 10:30, tired of waiting, my father pronounced it time to open gifts. If I had been allowed that privilege when I was younger I would have been ecstatic, 90 minutes less of torturous anxiety over what the boxes contained, BLISS!!! Now, I was simply irritated. Beyond the fact that the amount of actual surprises under the tree were minimal, the whole happy gift opening tradition was washed away. Ahhh if only I could regress to the days when Santa was real, parents actually went to the trouble of buying you great gifts and midnight was the restlessly awaited time! Yet, everything would have been better, if I could have looked out the window and caught a glimpse of a wonderful flurry of snowflakes descending from the heavens. Oh well, maybe next year…