Dumber'n Dirt
I grew up believing that my little corner of Virginia retained the most idiots per capita in the whole damn world. Not only the most idiots, but the most idiotic idiots, the biggest dumbest idiots known to man.
But then I went to college in a little corner of South Carolina. There, I had a roommate who, upon watching an episode of Planet Earth one night, was startled to learn that mammals were not birthed out of buttholes but rather vaginas. He’s one of the sweetest boys I’ve ever known, and he’s an idiot.
After that, I thought, these folks down here might have us Virginians beat. I figured maybe the most idiots in the world lived in the American South, that they got bigger and dumber the further down you go. But then I traveled to more corners of the earth, and, sure as shit, there were idiots in every damn one.
In France, I lived with this Austrian woman who listened to Friends on full volume in the living room while she folded laundry with jarring precision and efficiency. She thought Joey was so damn funny. One time, she asked me to sit down while I peed because she didn’t like the sound of my urine hitting the toilet water. I told her that she freaked people out. She spoke five languages, and she was an idiot.
Downstairs, in the same house, there was this old guy. He owned the place. We only spoke when he asked me to help him take his empty wine bottles to the glass recycling bin at the bottom of the hill. We’d stand silently in the fog, toss dozens of bottles one at a time into the big round container, and listen to them explode into sharp, green glitter. He was an author. There were books in boxes piled to the ceilings in the dark hallways. Behind the books were pictures of his ex-wife and estranged daughters. He’d pushed everyone away and felt bad for himself. He was obsessed with Heidegger, and he was an idiot.
In England, I lived in this lady’s house. She was a psychiatrist on a mysterious leave of absence. She’d chain-smoke cigarettes and day trade stocks most of the week. Her favorite thing to talk about was her short position on JP Morgan. We’d have tea in the afternoons, and she’d fantasize about global catastrophes that might crash the world banking apparatus and make her rich. Every few days, when she’d worn herself out or lost enough money, she’d take self-prescribed Ambien and sleep for eighteen hours. Once, she arose from a long sleep, came downstairs after dinner, and grabbed a bowl of the chicken soup on the stove. I was reading Big Sur at the time. She sat at the table, took a bite, and said, “You Americans… You lot are so impressed by people who don’t use punctuation. By the way, Daisy, darling, when you make soup, use less spice. All I can taste is pepper.” She was a doctor, and she was an idiot.
Now, I live in New York City, and there are also idiots here—millions and millions of idiots. Today at work, this guy called the cafe and said, “Hey there, what exactly comes on the BLT?” I paused, stared into the dry-erase board, and wrote IDIOT in big blue letters.
“It’s all in the name, my friend. A BLT is made with bacon, lettuce, and tomato,” I said in my ultra-polite restaurant voice.
“Great. I’ll have one of those,” he said.
I hung up and started making the sandwich. Standing there over the groaning lowboy, I reached into a sixth pan, pulled out a handful of green leaves, and then pushed them into the toasted bread. Oops, I thought. The restaurant where I work inexplicably uses arugula instead of lettuce on the BLT, a borderline criminal act. When the guy picked up his sandwich, I didn’t have the guts to tell him that it was arugula, not lettuce, that I was wrong. And when he took his first bite and tasted the arugula instead of sweet, watery lettuce, he surely thought, this idiot doesn’t know the difference between arugula and lettuce.
I do know the difference between arugula and lettuce, and I am an idiot. I am an idiot because I don’t like being wrong. I am an idiot because I think everybody else is an idiot.
We are all idiots. Idiocy is fundamental to the human condition. We weren’t born bad. We were born dumb, dumber’n dirt. The danger of idiocy is not that idiots exist but that idiots assume idiocy does not linger in themselves. So, if you find someone being an idiot today, tell them so, and tell them why, and then listen to them tell you why you are also an idiot. There is much to learn before you meet the dirt for which you are bound.
Hello, ya frickin’ idiots.