Yesterday my toddler son was playing with this little barn toy and my wife was doing all the different animal sounds for him, making him laugh, the normal cute baby shit. Then we had the following exchange: Of relevant context: we live in Texas, on a horse ranch, and have raised at various points dogs, cats, parrots, horses, goats, parrots, several different types of pigs and yes, even sheep. I always say there's no such thing as stupid questions, only stupid people. Sometimes stupid people get in way over their heads and try to verbally claw their way out. Other times normally smart people lapse into moments of stupidity where their brain backfires out of their mouth in the form of a question. Focus: Stupid questions/acts. Personally, at work, in class, wherever. If the stupid question/brain backfire act had any kind of fallout, all the better. Alt. Focus: Have a question you're afraid to ask in person because you think it might sound stupid? Behold, the anonymity of the Internet! Ask away in here, and we *promise* we won't make fun of you.
Let the record show you just called your toddler son a "stupid person." I dated in a girl in high school who asked if the movie Independence Day really happened. And she was absolutely not joking.
I'm pretty sure he called his wife a stupid person, based on that story. During my senior year in high school, a group of us were talking about something on a map, and it related to how close the USSR was to the USA at the end of Alaska. We had to get a globe instead, and as we talked about Alaska, this girl Virginia stood there with a blank look on her face. After probing, we came to find out that she thought Alaska was next to Mexico . . . because, on USA only maps, they would put in a little box in the bottom left next to Hawaii. She said, "Well, I always wondered how it could be so cold with that much snow."
Focus: I was in Baltimore with a coworker. We had to be in York, PA and decided to go early and have a day or two hanging out in Baltimore on the way. As we were driving out he saw a sign for Washington D.C. and asked.... "What is D.C.? Where is it?" Dude that's just our nations capitol, nothing you should have known for the last 40 years or so. "huh, I guess I never knew where it was". I'll think of more from him, he's a good salesman but he comes up with some real gems.
It's weird how people get these notions in their head at a young age, then just run with them, never questioning. I think we were talking about burn victims when a presumably intelligent college girl taking nothing but honors courses replied "Don't babies' limbs grow back?" Like a lizard. As many times as this experiment has been attempted... No, no they do not.
I was living in OK and got a phone call from a friend (who also lived there). "Umm...is Missouri to the left or right of Oklahoma?" First of all, this girl had been living in OK for more than a year, and she was unsure about the geography of the surrounding states? Secondly, the way she asked..."left or right" was mindblowing. She was a smart girl, but holy shit that was dumb.
I've heard lots of stupid questions. Mostly from clients. The best is 'Hey, I'm not going to get in jail for this, right?' Sure.
Not really otherwise smart people but.... "Aren't monkeys smarter than people?" Maybe smarter than you. And yes, she was 100% serious. "There's a way to turn caps off?" Well, he wasn't really dumb and ended up being fairly successful. But the guy could really make you wonder. He used to always text in all caps. At first I thought he was pissed off about something. Then I realized he was just being a little special.
My girlfriend also didn't know that lambs were baby sheep. She thought that they were a different species that was closely related, similar to the difference between goats and sheep. Which, honestly, makes a certain amount of sense, as very few people eat mutton. She thought that sheep weren't good to eat, but lambs were... so sheep were raised for wool, and lambs were raised for meat. Focus: When I was in middle school, I asked my teacher, "Why did you put all of the stupid kids at the front of the class?" I got a nice appointment with a counselor asking why I didn't have any friends after that one.
When my now wife and I were dating she was complaining to her mother about how windy it always was at my house. She said to her that she couldn't understand why it was so windy at my house considering we didn't even have any mature trees. While her mother tried to explain to her that the lack of mature trees would actually make the wind problem worse we discovered that my wife had somehow just always assumed wind came from trees.
Focus: Oh boy, we could have a whole thread just on stupid things I heard guys ask me when I was in prison. See, I got a reputation as being "the guy with all the answers" because I read a lot, I actually graduated from high school, I spoke with reasonably decent grammar and pronunciation, etc. Guys would come up to me all the time with questions ranging from how to spell words to science and math. Here are a few doozies just off the top of my head: - "Bandit, do you have to go to college to be in porno movies?" - "Wait, you mean Mt. Rushmore is a real thing?" (The guy thought that it was just a painting someone had made.) - "Was Richard Nixon a real person?" (Dude thought that he was a fictional character from the movies.) - "Why are so many artists gay? You know, like that Pablo Picasso guy." - One day two guys came up to me so I could settle an argument for them: Which state is closer to Texas, Colorado or California? It seems that one guy thought California bordered Texas; he totally forgot about Arizona and New Mexico being in the way. He wouldn't believe me until I showed him on a map.
This gem was asked yesterday: "Hey do you know this? Who was a German leader who went to war with the U.S.? Hitler or Stalin?" Seriously? You don't know who Hitler is? Someone fell asleep through history class and life. This is an example of a nurse in charge of your chemo medication. I weep for the future.
Not a stupid question, but a stupid statement from my twitter feed: Its been a full moon for like 3 days straight is this the month that one rare.moons supposed to.come out at like 1:56.am??
I've had some fucking doozies in my time of dumb questions: -"Aren't skunks a sort of cat?" No, I had to explain to this girl from middle school, they're more closely related to otters and weasels. She wouldn't buy it... because of the old Pepé Le Pew cartoons. -"Can turtles come out of their shells?" No, can you slide out of your skin on your backbone and ribs? -"How is Alaska bigger than Texas?" I had to show a similar graph. Same guy thought South Dakota and North Dakota were one state.
In grade 8 humanties class we were having discussion about euthanasia/assisted suicide when about half way through this girl asks "what does youth-in-asia have to do with killing yourself?" You could of heard pin drop everyone went so quite.
I think one thing that rings true is that in North America, it's easy to be stupid. Canada and the United States of America just make sense: But back to dumb shit: - Guy in Hasting's book store was describing a nine-foot long wolf his uncle in Alaska had seen. I told him there's never been the wolf born that grew to be that big. Biggest wolves around on this Earth are like sixty-three inches from snout to tail tip, and about thirty-four inches at the shoulder. Guy kinda moped and admitted he may have misheard his uncle. - Had a girl from my high school geography class, while I was asked by the teacher to help grade papers, label Venezuela 'Vietnam'. Holy fuck. Obviously it was wrong, and she mislabeled Chile as 'Venneswaila'. - I've had numerous conversations, with folks from all walks of life, explaining that hedgehogs are not the same as porcupines, aardvarks are not the same as anteaters, buffalo are not the same as bison, etc. Best one was the woman who thought pronghorns were a sort of goat. I had to explain their admittedly weird taxonomy, politely, because I'm well aware in a world were people need to worry about bigger things than taxonomic clades and she was like, "That's really cool, sort of like how orcas are fish?" As we were on a through-hiking trip in Montana and had just seen wild pronghorn in a herd and stopped to watch them and eat some snacks, suddenly all eyes are on this girl, incredulous. "Aren't orcas fish? That documentary was called Blackfish, right?" she stammered. I said politely, "Whales, and dolphins, which are just small toothed whales anyway, are all mammals, and are the most closely related to even-toed ungulates." She was dumbfounded. Girl was a friend of mine's girlfriend, and she wasn't trying to be dumb, because again, cladistics isn't something most people care for, but knowing that a whale isn't a fish should be something any first grader could tell you. - I've met many, many weirdos in my time as an electrical apprentice. People who think a live circuit is harmless. People who've tried to wire their own kitchen's can lights and ponder why they're not working. People who ended up practically burning down their shops out in the woods. One fellow, a Vietnam veteran who enjoys brewing powerful hooch in his wood shop, enthralled us with a story about how he was selected for a secret operation with a Counter Terrorist Unit... he lifted the entire plot for his ramblings from various episodes of 24. Hearing a nearly seventy year old Army guy half-ramble this out was somewhat entertaining, and as he had many, many guns and ammunition, I didn't call his fairly stupid mish-mash of the plots out.
My family, including myself, once spent an entire episode of NYPD Blue trying to figure out where the show took place. It was the most amazing shared brain backfire that has ever taken place in my home. I swear we are intelligent people, but it took an embarrassingly long time before we realized the answer is in the title.
On Friday my girlfriend got news that she may be headed to Argentina for work this spring. She got really confused when I mentioned it being south of Brazil and apparently this whole time she was mistaking it for Columbia on the map. Then yesterday we were at a neighbor's housewarming party and she asked what the chimney on the house was for. I was at the State Fair on Saturday and there are always ridiculous questions being asked in the livestock barns. "What kind of cows make chocolate milk?" "When do the miniature horses grow up?"