Stupid is as stupid does

I'm stupid and everyone knows it.

Maybe it's my face or my posture or simply the look in my eye, but I swear everyone I meet thinks I'm stupid. Now it's not malicious. People don't point at me and say, "look at stupid here." Instead it's more benign. It's a kind of pity almost as if they're whispering to their friends, "oh the poor thing is stupid."

In my younger days this hurt my ego quite a bit. Everyone, including me, likes to think they're smart. However as I got older I discovered it was for the better. Since everyone I meet thinks I'm stupid it keeps the expectations low and the praise for getting things right high. I get props for filling the dishwasher properly and putting the mustard back in the refridgerator when I'm done with it.

I do have some talents. I can string words together in pretty sentences and I can make conversation. I can keep time with the music and I can wink with both eyes. Once I walked and chewed gum at the same time. Each time I do these things I get polite and amused applause from the assembled masses who crowd around to watch me perform my little stupid guy tricks.

Oddly I work a job where you wouldn't expect to find a stupid guy. I'm an attorney and all day long people call my office and ask for my advice and counsel. Despite my stupidity I'm actually pretty good at my job. I think it's because of my one talent that I keep well hidden from the rest of the world. I can see patterns where others see chaos.

People who have gotten themselves in immense trouble come to me and ask for advice and counsel. I give good advice and counsel because I always keep it simple. I do that because I'm stupid. It wouldn't make sense if a stupid guy gave complex advice. I just use my hidden talent and I look for the pattern. When I see the pattern I say, "there is your problem. Don't do that. Do this."

At this point people generally nod and say "thank you." Then they go out and ignore my advice and make the same mistakes again. After that they usually come back to me and are either mad at me because I was right or mad at me because they think I'm wrong.

This used to bother me a lot. I never professed to be smart. If you ask me I'll tell you point blank I'm stupid. Everyone sees it when they look at me anyway, so why deny the truth? All I did was give them the solution to the problem and if they'd follow my simple advice they wouldn't be in the same mess again. I used to tell people that and all it did was make them mad.

So I finally applied my hidden talent to the situation and I think I understand why I was the object of people's ire at their own repeated mistakes. I came up with a two part answer.

First everyone believes they are terribly complex and smart. They simply can't believe that they would be stupid enough to make the same mistakes over and over again. After all, only us stupid people repeatedly make the same mistakes. After all a trained rat can memorize a pattern. If there was a pattern in their lives, they would be smart enough to see it. They don't need a stupid guy like me telling them what is what.

Second the human mind is a dangerous thing. A person can use their mind to cook up an immense crock of shit to excuse any behavoir, talk itself into believing the crock of shit and then conveniently forget that it was all a crock of shit in the first place. Thus a person can have the nerve to get mad at anyone who doesn't believe their crock of shit as readily as the first person believes their own crock of shit.

I stopped being angry with people for these things because I can see the same pattern in myself. I think it's natural. I think it's part of the self-preservation instinct. It allows us, as humans, to keep living with ourselves despite the fact we've fallen into a pattern otherwise we'd go crazy with the realization that we've been through all of this before. It's not a good or bad thing. It just is like the trees and the liver.

But still people keep asking for my advice and counsel despite the fact they rarely take it and then they get pissed at me. So I developed a simple little mechanism to try and deliver my advice and counsel in a more effective way. I use examples. I tell people about their pattern and then I give them a situation where they will react according to their pattern. Most of the time I even tell them, "watch this. I'm going to say/do/be this and you'll say/do/be that." Every single time they behave exactly as they have in the past in accordance with the pattern, yet something strange happens. They still can't see the pattern despite the fact that they know what to look for and that the pattern is now right there in front of their eyes. In fact their usual reaction is to get blazingly furious with me despite the fact that they asked for my advice and counsel. Fortunately for my stupid brain I understand why they get angry, so I'm not offended by it. Maybe I'm slightly confused, but I'm not offended.

I guess it's like the comedian says. "You can lead a horse to water but before you push him in just think about how bad a wet horse smells."

Or something.