Takes lack of brains to join club

Just last week I witnessed so many really inane or insane acts that I was forced to try and come up with a simple, concise, slogan-type motto to describe what it was I was seeing that would be easily understood by anyone listening,

For instance, as I was driving to retrieve newspapers, I got in a line of traffic that was about a quarter-mile in length. There was ample room between each car, but not much else. There were probably 25 cars in the line.

I have no idea why Florida Keys roads have so few passing zones, and why when there is a passing zone it’s almost always right before, on, or coming off a bridge. That is the first inane thing I thought about as a car about four in front of me decided to hit the gas and try to pass a close-knit group of three cars in front of them. Right in front of that was a large truck, for the most part blocking anyone’s view of the slight right-hand curve the road was to take very soon.

Mister, or miss, stupid, couldn’t tell from that distance, made it easily around the first two cars, but then we started to hit the curve and we could all see other cars coming in the other direction.

Chances are he/she wasn’t going to make it, so they hit the gas harder. The last car they wanted to score also saw the other cars coming, and in true aggressive driver fashion also hit the gas. We had a drag race going on with a blocked road up ahead.

So the original stupid just started drifting right. The second stupid had a choice to back off or get run off the road. The truck made speeding up anymore suicide for someone.

Second stupid decided discretion might indeed be the better part of valor and backed off the gas pedal. First stupid rolled into the vacated spot as the first oncoming driver lifted a single-digit salute from beyond the white line marking the side of the road.

And it hit me.

What these two idiots had managed to pull off was a successful stupid move.

So I have dubbed these types of events the “successfully stupid.”

Another example of successfully stupid: A medium-height lady is browsing the department store aisles and finds an item she wants but the box is on the top-most shelf. She isn’t tall enough to quite reach, but if she stretches on her toes and reaches out with her fingers, she can touch the box. She does so. She inches the box out on the shelf. It reaches the tipping point and slides over the side.

On her toes and extended to the max, she simply folded over and put her hands on her head to avoid a concussion.

The box did indeed hit her in the back and slid down to the floor, landing upright. No sharp sounds like breakage were heard.

Another successfully stupid move.

While driving through the shopping center parking lot, I was coming down the aisle in front of the smaller shops on the east side. A youngish gentleman, who did not by the way work for Pizzaworks, came out of the pizza shop carrying a box in one hand and the ubiquitous cell phone in the other.

The box was face high. He couldn’t see anything on my side. But I wanted to park in a space that was open before I would have gotten to him so I didn’t worry much.

I should have.

Apparently the person he was talking to on the phone was someone in another location in the plaza, and that location was behind me.

Pizza boy turned directly into my path. The person he was talking to stepped out of the car next to the parking space I was attempting to occupy. He was also talking on the phone. It took a split second, maybe a little more, before both of them realized they had basically stepped in front of a moving vehicle.

Pizza boy put on the brakes, lost control of the pizza (but never the phone) and almost pitched face first in a frantic effort to stop. The pizza box went flying almost over the hood of the Jeep I was that close, and hit the roof of the car driven by the other guy who did drop his phone.

The pizza box miraculously did not slide off the roof onto the parking lot where I would have felt completely justified in running over it and smashing it into a super-thin-crust pie.

Pizza boy managed not to lose his footing. The other phone dude didn’t piss his pants as I was able to stop in time to keep from smashing into him and his car door, probably ripping both in half.

Another successfully stupid act pulled off.

I couldn’t believe it.

Then we have the cell-phone talking lady who was driving with both windows down and stuck her hand, the one with the phone in it, out the window to wave at a friend driving by.

She lost control of the phone and it sailed through the back window of the four-door car and landed in the seat.

Successfully stupid.

It’s a whole new world.

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