NO THOUGHTS TODAY

I JUST WAS NOT THINKING TODAY.

I recently wrote that I THOUGHT OF YOU TODAY.

I meant every word. However, there are times when I am not thinking about you. In truth, I have moments where I do not think about anything. That is a little frightening!

There are times that the chains on my mood swing just snap...and I go into Stupid Ville.

Thoughtless. Mindless. Scatter-brained. Moronic.

My childhood dream was to become an astronaut. Unfortunately, it was not in the stars.

I fell short of NASA’s astronaut standards for eyesight, intelligence, aviation skills, and problem solving. How was I to know that my failure to accurately follow an assigned check list would haunt me for the rest of my life?

Last week, my wife lowered her hopes from words to pictures. That’s right. Pictures! She used to give me a list of items to buy at the store. Somehow, this Ivy-League educated husband finds ways to miss or mess up something on the grocery list.

This time she sent me to the store with pictures of the food purchases. (No, this is not the grocery picture assignment I mentioned before. This happened after months of flash card training at home.) How humiliating!

Well, not as humiliating as when I returned home with blackberries, instead of blueberries!

When my wife pointed out my mistake in the colored berry selection, I muttered, “Well, I feel stupid.”

My adorable wife laughed as she asked, “Didn’t you look at the picture? Did you not think to look at the product description next to the picture?”

I was stunned. I did not know if that was one question or two?

Now I am back to the preschool basics of learning colors and counting and reading.

Well, the store assistant assumed I could not read. That was also humiliating. When he offered to help, I showed him a picture on my phone and asked if they had any berries that looked like it. He stared at me as if I were stupid. I explained that the chain on my mood swing had snapped.

In my defense, the color in the picture was very misleading.

I already admitted I failed the astronaut eyesight exam. Apparently while navigating a spaceship, it matters whether you hit the abort liftoff black button on the computer keyboard rather than the rocket thrust acceleration blue button.

The only areas where I surpassed NASA standards were weight and stupidity. One was fixable through a better diet. The other cannot be fixed. Not even by the greatest minds in the known universe.

There are moments when my stupidity ventures to boldly go where no stupidity has gone before.

STUPIDITY. If you need me to provide a definition, then just consider yourself far above the minimal standard for ‘idiot.’

Stupidity is universal. We each exhibit some degree of it at various times in life. It does seem to come more naturally to some. I know a few people whose stupidity appears endless and effortless.

To help all mankind, I wish to offer these suggestions to avoid doing stupid things.

Do not stand over a toilet with your eyeglasses on top of your head. (The absence of clean eyeglasses did contribute to my inability to discern the picture colors for the berries on the shopping list.)
Do not place your cell phone on top of your car.
Do not place your billfold on top of your car.
Do not place your mail on top of your car.
Do not place your wife on top of your car.
Do not close the car door before your foot is fully inside the vehicle.
Do not try to walk on ice.
Do not fall on ice without access to a cell phone to call for help.
Do not come home with three ice cream cones when there are four grandchildren at the house.
Do not use stupid phrases as computer passwords, such as Dumb and Dumber, or Dummy and Dummy2. I suggest using my favorite password, 2Dumb4U.
Do not drive away from the gas station before returning the gas pump to its stored position.
Do not stomp on the brakes when your Raising Cane’s sauce is open.
Do not stomp on the brakes when your beverage cup is unsecured.
Do not stomp on the brakes when your hot pizza box is in the front seat. (Seatbelt laws should be enforced.)
Do not stomp on your brakes when your ride-along dog is standing in the back seat. (It is amazing how quickly a pet can become a windshield ornament.)
Do not forget…anything (anniversary, birthdays, doctor appointments).
Do not leave the water running in your sink…in your shower…in your lawn sprinkler.
Do not drop your cell phone into the Bermuda Triangle darkness between your car seat and console.
Do not make impulse purchases without checking the three figure return shipping costs to China.
Do not get into the wrong car just because it looked similar to yours.
Do not think that money in your checking account never needs to be replaced.
Do not think that anything on the internet is ‘free.’ (You just signed up for a ten-year monthly supply with no customer service connection.)
Do not stick a suction cup to your forehead for the grandkids to pull off.
Do not call someone “Buddy” or “Bro” or “Idiot” just because you cannot remember their name.
Do not reply to a “bless you” for your sneeze with “you too.”
Do not scream at the traffic red lights more than three times in a row.
Do not use hand signals to communicate with other drivers.
Do not carry five sacks of groceries at one time so you can make fewer trips from the car.
Do not place a water-filled ice chest on the hotel clothes cart.
Do not leave your room key and ID in your locked hotel room.
Do not be intimidated or stopped or made to feel guilty while enjoying a ‘family size’ bag of chips or cookies all by yourself.
Do not type an angry text or email that you never intend to send. (Ooops! Did I just hit the ‘send’ button?)
Do not binge on The Good! The Bad! And The Ugly while naming people you know who could play those characters.
Do not give your honest opinion about someone’s recipe, clothing, haircut, or parenting technique…NEVER! NO MATTER WHAT!
Do not show any signs of life when your friend asks for help to move a few rocks.
Do not move your spouse’s keys to a better place to keep them.
Do not open a pill box over the sink.
Do not rinse silverware while the garbage disposal is engaged.
Do not tell a caller you are not home before checking to see if their car is in your driveway.
Do not leave your dinner meal unattended on the table stand next to your chair while you go to the garage refrigerator for something to drink. (Some dogs see that as a grand opportunity provided by their ‘stupid’ owner.)
Do not make private comments on a group text.
Do not set the table for the family dinner before you realize the dishwasher was never turned on. (At that point, it might be ‘stupid’ to even mention the slight discrepancy between people’s varying definitions of clean and dirty.)
“Do not ever argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience” (Mark Twain).
Do not ask a stupid question without expecting a truckload of sarcastic remarks from my family.
Do not pause the washing machine so you can throw in your red shirts with your wife’s laundry.
Do not continue driving to the next town while your car’s dashboard flashes ‘No Fuel.’
Do not give a smart phone to a stupid person. (That is stupid!)
Do not waste your time trying to teach a stupid person how to use their smart phone. (That is stupider than more stupid!)
Do not try to convince a stupid person that what they are saying or doing is stupid. (That is the stupidest waste of time!)
Do not honk your horn louder for stupid people. (They will not notice and, if they do, they will think you are celebrating with them!)

The old wise Albert Einstein spoke about his Theory of Relativity in real life terms. “There are two things that are infinite: The universe and human stupidity, and I am not sure about the universe…The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has limits.”

Maybe there is an APP for stupid people. Surely, there is a market for it.

I do predict that Artificial Intelligence will be defeated by Natural Stupidity.

I am going to go along with Shakespeare on this one. “A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool.”

DO NOT FORGET THERE IS BEAUTY IN STUPIDITY…USE PICTURES TO CHOOSE THE RIGHT ACCENT COLOR.

Others will have to put up with my stupidity because YOU CANNOT FIX STUPID.

Stupid people do not gain wisdom as they age; they just become old stupid people.

I pray the Lord saves me from being morosoph– an educated person who lacks common sense, good judgment, refuses to listen to other ideas, but insists on commenting about everyone and everything.

To conclude with a hopeful thought, it is worth noting that jellyfish have existed for thousands of years without possessing brains.

So, remember that the one who laughs last is usually the one who thinks the slowest.

EYES UP! LOVE YOU!….even when the chains on my mood swing snap.

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