The Stupid, and how they differ from Us

OK, Cookie hasn't been around lately because we've been having asbestos abatement done to the basement (planned) and some other work (planned) done to the house.  But we are making progress.  My office is almost unpacked and I have picked my paint color - (Valspar's Smoke Infusion), the garage is unpacked, though loaded with broken down boxes and the Sun room which was fully loaded is down to 10 boxes.

That leaves the ten boxes in the breakfast porch, and the basement (more on that, later) to go and this long nightmare will be over.

As Muscato has pointed out, three moves equals a fire.  But we have become aware of a dangerous trend.  Do you remember that packer who wouldn't shut is yap while he was packing our stuff?  Well it seems that EVERYTHING, save one item, that has arrived with some form of damage, was caused by him.

So far a 100 year old Chinese Export pottery vessel (3X3 feet) is damaged beyond repair, one of the two 18th century tall case/grandfather clocks that he packed with need the case repaired, and he managed to destroy a corning casserole dish that was "unbreakable".

THEN there are the things that he packed that should have stayed with the house.  They're in a box by the door ready to be shipped back to the owners of our old home.  I think that they would want the ring of skeleton keys that were in a box marked STAYS WITH HOUSE - DO NOT PACK OR MOVE, wouldn't you?

He wrapped rolls of paper towels in packing paper, lest they get bruised or worse, jostled.

It got to the point where we stopped using his name (Tim) and started referring to him as the "Idiot". As his handy work became more evident, we promoted him to "Moron" as in:

Me, opening a box: : "Damn it!"
Husband: "What did the Moron break this time?"

But his crowning glory was when our Moron carefully wrapped an open mouse glue trap that was up in the joists under the kitchen from 2005. You know, little black plastic tray with a .25 of an inch with sticky glue.  The ones that you can buy at the Piggly Wiggly, four for $4.99?

How he found it is a mystery, but that he somehow thought it should be moved is even more troubling.  How carefully did he wrap it? Ten - that's right - TEN sheets of packing paper were used to cocoon and cradle said glue trap (which thankfully never caught a mouse) for the 400+ trip to our house.

Why? Because the idiot was too busy running his mouth to pay attention to what his eyes were seeing and his hands were doing.  It never once crossed his mind that "should I ask if this should be packed?".  No, he was cruising on autopilot, and I don't think he ever knew what it was, but whatever it was, it had to be valuable.

You can imagine the look upon my face when I found it.

If you can't, I can tell you that I wasn't relieved to see it.

And I wasn't happy about it sticking to my hand.

I did, however, for the sake of irony announce to the husband, (who was buried in a corner of the garage putting away the gardening tools) "Well thank God, this made it in one piece."

"What?"

"This open glue trap."

"THAT?  What kind of moron would pack that?"

"Evidently our Moron. I'm just grateful there isn't a dead mummified mouse stuck to it," I said as I tried to unsuccessfully fling it off my hand and into the garbage can.

What scares me about this is that thirty years ago, a friend from high school won a rhetorical writing contest with a paper that defended Stupid people.  She argued that the stupid are different from us, they have less stress, probably have fewer heart attacks and were happy with their lots in life, ergo, and like cockroaches, they would win out in the end as thinking mankind died from work stress, home stress, child rearing stress and all the other stresses in life and the heart attacks that come with those stresses.

So it offends me to think that these types of shit for brains people could one day rule the world.  People like our Moron.  Whether it's packing paper towels in packing paper, making sure a used glue trap makes it safely to its owners new place of residence or pushing the red shiny button when they have been instructed not to do so.

And, after Mitt Romney said that he would let Big Bird go, and use the itsy bitsy, teeny, tiny amount of money that PBS gets from the Federal budget to help balance the damned thing while cutting taxes and upping defense spending.   Whether it's that grit from the moving company or Mitt Romney, I get the increasing feeling that like Haley Joel Osment could see dead people in that movie, I can see the stupid, and they are invading my life.

But whether it is the packing of a used rodent glue trap, or getting rid of Big Bird because a he's a threat to the Conservative cause of stamping out anything educational, the Stupid seem to be getting the upper hand.  And what worse is that people are believing or at least are letting them get away with that behavior that says, "I'm an idiot."

So I ask, how stupid can one be?  And what will happen to the rest of us when they win?