“Stupid is as stupid does.”
I always loved that line from Forrest Gump. It says what it says without any confusion or misrepresentation of fact. Lately, I see more and more of that here and it makes me wonder: Do these
people know they’re being stupid or are they so stupid they can’t see it?
Case in point; a friend of ours rented an apartment to someone. His unit is on the 7th floor of the building. A building that has had the elevator shut down for 6 months. Now, fortunately for him, the day he showed the apartment to this new renter, the elevator company was working on it and let him take the renter up to the 7th floor. Our friend never mentioned that the elevator was a problem.
Well, a week goes by and the guy comes over to move in, and lo and behold, no elevator. He tells our friend, “I’m not renting a 7th floor apartment with no elevator!” Our friend replies, “It’s getting fixed, don’t worry, you will have an elevator!” The renter tells him he will give it five days and then if it’s not fixed he will find another place.
Tom Hanks as Forest Gump
Well, five days later our friend tries calling the building manager to see if the elevator has been fixed. No one answers the phone. So, what does our friend do? Nothing. He doesn’t call his other renters in the building. He doesn’t go over there. He does nothing. He doesn’t call his new renter. Then on Monday he calls the manager again, finds out the elevator has worked since Saturday. He calls the renter. The renter who has now found another apartment. And our friend can’t believe it! He is angry the guy found another place.
Stupid is as stupid does.
Now, I must confess to being “the stupid” this week. As you know, it’s been a little cold some nights here. So one night I took home one of our heaters from the restaurant and told one of my staff to load it in my car with a gas tank “with the least amount of gas in it.” I didn’t want the kitchen to be left with a low tank of gas. And heck, we figured we would only need it one or two nights, so no need for a lot of gas.
Guess what happened? That’s right, we got home, tried to turn on the heater and found out the gas tank was empty. Because, “the least amount of gas” is in fact an empty tank. I should have known better. I should have told my employee, “…but make sure it has some gas in it.” I was stupid, perhaps he was stupider.
I was ticked off and while Codi defended our employee because I didn’t explicitly say it needed to have some gas in it, I argued that I would never have had to say that to an American!
But I don’t know, because lately I see a lot of stupid in the U.S. A lot. And I’m not going political here (you all know which way I lean), but to me, saying something like “watching the U.S. FINALLY defend our borders was the HIGHLIGHT of my Thanksgiving weekend,” is a pretty stupid thing to say. People were tear-gassed. Little children were choking on it. Women were running with their children.
And the president of the U.S. defended it by saying they were “grabbers, they call them grabbers.” Stupid. Who calls them grabbers? No one. He made it up. You won’t find it on any internet search before he used it. Stupid.
Anyway, the real question here is, “Does this represent America today? Does the country that was founded on the backs of immigrants really want to be known by this type of action?
Let me ask what I know many of you will attack as “a stupid question.” Wouldn’t it be smarter to just make it easy to legally enter the country? Wouldn’t it be easier to create a system to allow immigrants to come in on work visas and then pay taxes on what they earn and become part of the system?
Go ahead, tell me I’m stupid. I don’t care. Because I know that one day when people in the U.S. are paying $6 for a tomato, they are going to realize that getting all of the illegal immigrants out of the country was a perfect example of “Stupid is as stupid does.”
I’m just sayin.’
