Stupidity Should Hurt

[If I continue yelling, "Get off my ass, asshole!" on the commute to work each morning, do you think I'll get colon cancer?

I'm just wondering.]

I went to lunch with a coworker yesterday. Typically I avoid spending time with this chick because her life choices bug the hell out of me. But she'd been nice enough to get me a Christmas present, so I thought I'd return the favor with food. "I think my daughter is getting suspicious of Santa Claus," she said. "Oh yeah?" "She caught my Mom slipping money underneath her pillow the other night. Now, because she knows the Tooth Fairy isn't real, she wants to know if Santa is fake too." "So what did you say?" "I told her, 'You believe in God, don't you?'"

After staring at her for a moment, a spoonful of soup halfway to my mouth, I managed to stammer, "You compared Santa with GOD?!" She shrugged a shoulder. "And unicorns. I told her that if she believed with all her heart, than Santa must be real." The sad thing is, she was proud of herself. It was all I could do just to finish my meal. What I really wanted was to reach across the table and smack her. How do people like this get to have kids? Shouldn't there be regulations? People have to take a test to drive. Raising kids is a million times more complicated!

"Did you hear about Britney Spears' sister?" The Mother-Of-The-Year asked this morning. "That family is so trashy! It's because of stuff like this that I won't let my daughter listen to their music." Yes, because everyone knows the number one cause of trashiness is through osmosis. If her daughter ends up needing a therapist it won't be because she told her that God wasn't real. No way. Although I would like to add, it's pretty funny that Lynne Spears was writing a parenting book. No worries, it's been halted indefinitely.

She's now writing a book about what it's like to be a gay black man on Mars.

Two weeks ago, just before the funeral for AG, one of Hoop's non-related relatives started a discussion about smoking. *Ahem* Please remember that this relative is NOT blood related. I would hate for you to think that Hoop carries some kind of Stupid Gene. "It's a good thing you quit smoking," this relative said to me. "Someday you're going to want to have a baby. I knew a woman who smoked and got pregnant. She quit as soon as she found out. But about three months later she lost the babies. Twins. When the doctor pulled them out he found smoke in their lungs!"

Smoke. In their LUNGS.

"You don't say!" I replied, downing the rest of my beer and excusing myself. Stupidity should hurt. Maybe then blatant misinformation wouldn't get passed around like it does. We could set people up with devices that shock them when they do something moronic. Not the first time. Everyone needs a little stupidity room. Just this morning I grabbed my cell phone (which was laying on my desk) instead of the computer mouse. It took a good two seconds before I realized what was going on. I should have gotten a shock after three. The world would be a much more bearable place.