The dumb things people do

The Dumb Things People Do

You start out in life doing some things when you are young that are not too smart, but that is a learning experience. In your middle years you have what is called a brain freeze. This is where you do not think things through, and you make a decision in a hurry causing you to do something dumb. An example would be a colleague of mine that asked a young girl when her baby was due, only to find he put his foot in his mouth, because she was only overweight. Sometimes we say dumb things, and other times we do dumb things.
Later in life other things come into play that make you look silly. When I started to notice my vision was not what it used to be, I decided only old people needed reading glasses, so I resisted as long as possible, but this got me in trouble too.
One morning as I moved around the kitchen trying to decide what to eat I remembered to take the medication that I almost always forgot about. I walked over to the counter, took the orange and gray pills out of the container like I had for the last few days, and popped them in my mouth, and with a drink of water, swallowed. As I set the container down on the counter my daughter Nikki walked in. She asked me what I was doing as she walked over to the counter. I said I had just taken my medicine. She picked up the container opened it and emptied it in her hand asking me how long I have been taking them. I said just a few days. She said, “this is the dog’s medicine, ” as she counted the pills, and said there are six missing. I said I was taking two every day. It turns out the dog’s pills were the same size and pink and gray, and mine were orange and gray. Now I wear my glasses when I take medicine, but I still get jokes about taking the dog’s medicine.
The next thing to get me in trouble was my memory, or lack of it. It happened on an early Saturday morning when there were a lot of things going on. Nikki was moving out, and I was going to help her move using my van. My Wife May was getting ready to go to work at Lord & Taylor, and her car had a tire with a slow leak.
I thought I had just enough time to take her car to have the tire fixed, come back to load the van and move Nikki. I went into the bedroom to get something I thought I needed to take with to give to the tire repair guy, and went back into the kitchen when I remembered I had just eaten and I needed to take a pill before I left.
I went over to the sink to get a glass of water. Looking out the window while I was pouring the water in the glass I saw three young boys walking near my new van, so I watched them for a minute, at the same time popping the pill in my mouth and washing it down with the water. Seeing the boys walk away I turned from the window to take the car to the shop, when I felt something in my left hand.
Looking down I unfolded my hand to see my pill. Puzzled Racing through my mind was everything I had done in the last few minutes as I tried to figure out what I had just swallowed. Then it struck me like lightning; I had just swallowed the plastic cap from the valve on May’s tire, which I was going to give to the tire repairman.
May walked into the kitchen and saw the puzzled look on my face asked me what was wrong. When I told her she stood there laughing, shaking her head. Even though this was a dumb thing to do I thought it was funny so I told the people at work, and the rest of the day guys were telling me to bend over so they could check my air pressure.
I do not consider myself an uneducated person, I actually think I am book smart, and street smart, but this goes to show you that even Smart people can do Dumb things.

Robert L. Murdoch

02/19/09