Stupid is as stupid does

October 19 | Damian Bathersby

Good morning children. Today’s lesson is about stupidity.
The Macquarie Dictionary defines it as “the state, quality or fact of being stupid”.

In turn, it defines stupid as many things, my favourite being “lacking ordinary activity and keenness of mind”.

There were several other definitions but we only have one dictionary at work and the blokes in the sports department had it booked for the rest of the day.
Those guys just love their definitive verbs and past participles. But I digress.

I was keen to discuss stupidity because it’s struck me recently that the world is full of really stupid people but for some reason we are becoming increasingly willing to turn a blind eye.

Seriously. You see some idiot doing a burn-out in his hotted-up Datsun 120Y and your first reaction is “that’s so stupid”. Or maybe “that’s so sad”. But that’s it.

Unless he wipes out a carload of nuns and orphans (in which case it officially becomes “really stupid”) we’ve got to the point where stupidity is so ingrained in society that we tend to let it go.

Take this scenario - a car in front of you is towing a trailer loaded with rubbish and pieces of paper and other odds and ends are flying out all over the place.

Do you:
A Flash your lights and blow your horn until he pulls over, then demand he go back and pick up every piece of rubbish? (Not likely, given that he could be bigger than you; having a bad day; armed with sawn-off shotgun or all three).
B Call the police and give them his registration? (Possibly but let’s be honest, they’ve got enough to do fighting real crime).
C Go back and pick up the rubbish yourself. (Yeah right).
D Mutter “look at that stupid idiot” and 30 seconds later have forgotten the whole thing?

Choice D wins hands down which means idiots will continue to rule the world long after nuclear holocaust has wiped out the last of the cockroaches.
But there are many levels of stupidity.

There’s the level that will result in the nuclear holocaust I just mentioned, (take note Mr Bush, we’re still watching you) and there’s the stupidity which has sadly become the norm (like the idiot with the trailer).

Then there’s the stupidity which has even the most cynical among us shaking our heads. Like the public servant who’s just been busted faking illness to avoid work.

“Not so stupid,” I hear you say. “I told the boss I had a migraine one day when I couldn’t be bothered getting out of bed.”

Big deal. This bloke makes all of you look like amateurs.

You see, 28-year-old Phillip Lyons didn’t tell his boss he had a headache ... or the flu. He claimed he had lung cancer and repeatedly wrote fake medical certificates to avoid having to go to work.

It was a great little scam but he went too far when he produced a letter, reportedly from the head of the oncology unit at Canberra Hospital, saying he needed surgery. His boss, being the caring, sharing type of person bosses tend to be in the public service, tried to visit him in hospital. Imagine her surprise when staff said they’d never heard of him.

It’s testimony to how convincing he was as a liar that his boss visited two more hospitals before admitting that she’d probably been conned and she and young Mr Lyons might have to have a serious talk about his future.

See ... stupid, stupid, stupid.

But then stupidity, like beauty, is really in the eye of the beholder. I was recently reading about the “mooning” festival in California, where 8000 people gather to bare their buttocks at passing trains.

That’s right – 8000 naked butts waving in the fresh air. Been happening every year since the 1970s, apparently.

Recreational drugs, alcohol and in-breeding make a nasty combination, don’t they?

Reminds me of the time I lost a contact lens at a nudist colony.
Unfortunate? Yes.
Hilarious? Ditto.
But stupid?
Not unless some of them got caught taking a sickie to be there.