Don’t Tell Them It Was Me
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“There was this guy at my high school that wasn’t too bright and was mostly harmless but about halfway through decided he was gonna be a thug. One day, he goes into a class of first years when their teacher wasn’t there and robs all their electronics, cash and valuables at knifepoint without covering his face and before he left gave them his real name saying, ‘And you better not tell them it was me, Jim Conrad, who stole all your stuff.’
He then proceeded to leave school grounds with all the stolen stuff, but decided against stashing it off campus and came back with all the stolen stuff in his backpack and went back to spy on the class with his backpack full of loot while police officers were there taking statements to make sure they weren’t ratting him out.
The kids all tell the police what happened and when Jim hears his name, he steps into the class proclaiming he’d gut them if they didn’t take back saying he did it. The police officers were still in the classroom and he had all the stolen goods with him. He was expelled and arrested and when word got out to our year group everyone just groaned and sighed.
I don’t know why he’s so stupid, but it wasn’t an isolated act of idiocy, it was quite well known by everyone in my year group how dumb he was. In fact, he didn’t even qualify for initial admission but his family called in a ton of favors to get him in on a recommendation.”
What Are The Rules, Again?
“The first time I met Ben was in Improv 101. I was only taking the class for fun, but about half the people there were aspiring actors…including Ben. On the first day, the teacher had us all play this silly game to break the ice and so we’d all remember each other’s names. The rules are pretty simple: 1) pick an adjective that starts with the same letter as your first name, 2) introduce yourself using Adjective + First Name, and 3) do a simple gesture that goes with it. So everyone is going around the circle, introducing themselves as Daring Daniel and Lonely Lauren and Awesome Alex… until we get to Ben. Ben introduces himself as ‘Surfer Ben.’
He proceeded to misunderstand at least one key element of every game or exercise for the rest of the class. I have no clue how this man functions in daily life. He has since managed to get a few featured extra roles on TV, though.”
Michael Or Michelle?
“There was this receptionist at the veterinary office we have taken our dogs to over the years who argued with my dad about how to pronounce his own name. He went in to pick up some prescription for our dog Daisy and this girl asked the typical, ‘name of the dog, name of owner’ type questions.
‘We have it listed as Michelle and you don’t look like a Michelle,’ she says. Dad asked how it was spelled on the monitor and sure enough, it was still spelled ‘Michael,’ which is my dad’s name.
He said ‘That says, Michael. That’s my name.’ And she argued with him about it! He had to get his driver’s license out to show her, and even though she finally relented to let him pick up whatever it was he was down there to pick up, she was adamant my dad has been mispronouncing his own name for 50+ years.
The best part is when Dad tells us this whole story, we think nothing of it until three months later when my Mom took the dog in for a check-up. The receptionist still thought the owner of the dog was ‘Michelle,’ and that my mom must be in a lesbian relationship. Mom gently corrected the lady that it was Michael and again this girl was adamant it was pronounced Michelle. My Mom, bemused, said something along the lines of ‘It’s literally a name from the Bible. It’s pronounced Michael and has been for thousands of years.’ The receptionist sat in silence outside of the minimal amount of talking needed for the rest of that visit.”
Let Sleeping Kids Lie
“One night during high school, my friend and I got invited to a party. I didn’t drive back then, so my friend picked me up. All went well on our way to the party. On the way back, however, he got pulled over. As we were pulling to the side of the road, I told him that I was going to pretend to be sleeping (since I was the passenger). Anyway, I hear the cop get out of his patrol car, walk towards our car, and stop at the window but he doesn’t say anything. I can feel the brightness of his flashlight but I don’t hear him or my friend say anything. After what seemed like an eternity, I decided to open my eyes to see what’s going on. That’s when I see my friend, the guy who is driving, pretending like he is sleeping too.
So after my initial internal, ‘holy crap’ moment, the cop, who was obviously messing with us, apologized for waking us up and asked us to step out of the car. He never said, but I’m sure he suspected us of being under the influence, which we weren’t. My friend and I were just being dumb kids, he more so than I, obviously. We fully cooperated and since we weren’t out past curfew, we were soon on our way.
The reason the cops pulled us over? My friend’s car had a busted tail light. I asked him what he hoped to accomplish by pretending to be sleep-driving, to which he replied that he thought I had a smart idea and he should do what I did. He’ll probably be glad to know that this is his most embarrassing moment.”
How Do I Get There, Again?
“I have a friend named Rachel. Now this one night in high school, we all got the munchies and decided to go get ourselves some late night Sonic. We pile into Rachel’s car even though we’ve heard stories about her bad driving, but that’s another story.
Anyway, she asks us how to get to Sonic and we proceed to give her directions turn-by-turn until we finally pull into the Sonic parking lot. Upon our arrival, she smirks and says, ‘Oh I work here!’
It’s Not My Fault!
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“My mom’s cousin was the getaway driver when his friends held up a 7-11. He had some outstanding tickets at the time. As he was driving his moron friends home, he sped past a cop, who inevitably pulled him over. He defended his bad driving by telling the cop he was just the getaway driver. Then he got arrested. He has since been arrested for a series of other similarly stupid crimes.
He also believes that there’s a global cabal of Jews who are out to get him. Recently, he got arrested for driving under the influence, which got his license revoked. This was obviously because of the Jews and not because he decided to drive inebriated past a police station. When he was denied a weapon license, that was because of the Jews at work. I have no idea why he thinks a global cabal would be focused on some moron from Saskatchewan.”
That’s Not How It Works, Honey
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“I had a friend in college and she had lots of stupid moments but the best story is probably the night she went home with a guy and was freaking out the next day that she might be pregnant. They’d only fooled around, but for some reason, she thought maybe he had spunk on his hands and therefore could have got some inside her. I never fully understood why she thought this, I vaguely remember her saying something about he might have been jerking off before he touched her but she didn’t see. I don’t know.
So anyway, she’s so anxious about this she decides she needs the morning after pill and gets it. Then because of the warnings about how ill it can make you, she came to the conclusion that she needed to tell her parents the whole tale. I honestly can’t remember her logic here. Why she didn’t wait to see if it even made her sick, or why being sick would be suspicious and would give her away. Anyway, this led to a lecture about promiscuity from her religious parents.
The best part of it is: she was studying to be, and now is employed as, a freaking science teacher. Teaching children.”
Those Can Be Washed?
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“My cousin is one of the stupidest people I’ve ever met. All through public school, she was a snob who looked down on everyone. She was super stylish and struggled academically.
We graduated in 2014. We both went to college, although not the same one. She got a job at a bar and always stayed out late drinking. Her boyfriend told her she didn’t need to complete college, so she just stopped showing up. She didn’t drop out, she just stopped showing up to classes. She completely flunked out.
Here comes the mega stupidity: our families live hours away from her college at the time. Her family went to move her back home. My cousin’s mom noticed a pile of clothes in the corner. The mom said ‘what’s that, your laundry? Pack it and we’ll wash it when we get home later.’
My cousin (I kid you not) said: ‘you can wash those?!’
Turns out, she’d been throwing away clothes instead of washing them. She claimed she didn’t know she could, yet she washed her undergarments and bras without a hitch.
She’s now at home with her family and has started doing more chores to show an increase in responsibility. She still tries to throw clothes away, citing that she didn’t know they could be washed and reused. Makes me wonder what she thought all those years before college before she left home. She wore some of the same outfits repeatedly — she had to have known they could be washed.”
What Is “What If?”
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“I once called an Uber driver. When he arrived, he immediately asked me: ‘Are you going to (X location?)?’ I said: ‘No.’ He responded: ‘Great, because I’m not going to take you to (X location).’ ‘Fine,’ I said.
The journey got underway, and I was curious as to what he would’ve done if I had said that yes, I wanted to go to X location. So I asked him: ‘Hey, what would you have done if I had said that I DID want to go to X location?’ He responded: ‘Look, man, I’m not going to effing take you to X location, OK? I told you already.’
I was a bit befuddled, but I tried again: ‘No no, I don’t want to go there. In fact, you already know where I want to go, it’s on your destination map. I’m just curious, what if I DID want to go to X location? Would you have refused me the trip? Would you have driven off?’
He said: ‘Look, man I can’t change the trip now. And anyway I told you I refuse to go to X location. You gotta understand I’m busy.’
We spent nearly 15 minutes with variations of this back and forth. He was a fluent English speaker, by the way. By the end of it, I was 100% convinced that he couldn’t understand the syntax of a hypothetical. He literally couldn’t understand the question, ‘If (X situation which is NOT the case) then what action would you take?’
I wasn’t even mad, just astonished. How had he navigated through life thus far? What were his financial decisions like? I really wanted to follow him home and make a reality TV show about him or something.”
I Can’t Find It
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“I work at a veterinary clinic and once helped a client out to his car with some dog food. He struggled for a bit to get into the vehicle. I, jokingly, asked if it was his car. He backed up, looked at it and said, ‘Nope. No this is not my car,’ and went to a different color and make of car in the lot. There were only three cars in the whole lot!
He was not elderly or have any obvious deficiencies. Which is not to say he didn’t, but we had a lot of interaction with him and he seemed mostly to just not listen or pay attention.
He was notorious for being dumb. No matter what we did or instituted, after an appointment he had with us he would ALWAYS forget everything we had said and LOSE the paperwork we sent with him between our office and his house. His girlfriend would always call in a tizzy that we, ‘told him nothing of what was going on with the dogs or how to use the medications.” He also liked to argue with the veterinarians that whatever they diagnosed was wrong. They currently go to another local clinic after fighting with one of our vets but will be back after fighting with the other one. They’ve been back and forth a few times. OH. He also bought a puppy and wanted his ears cut. We don’t do that so he went a couple states away to have them done but then didn’t tape them up properly and now they’re cut AND floppy. Their poor dog is sweet but dumb, untrained, and looks stupid because of this idiotic guy.”
Wipe That Grin Off His Face
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“I knew this guy in high school who really thought his ‘practical jokes’ were hilarious. He would just do stuff designed to annoy you, thinking your salty reaction would make it funny. You may be thinking this guy’s a prick and you’d be right. But he’s also incredibly stupid because every time someone said, ‘Dude, chill out with your crap,’ he just blew it off. He had social stupidity I guess.
Well, one day he knocked this kid’s hat off his head. These guys were friends but clearly, there was some hostility. The other kid picks up his hat and tells the pranker to knock it off. The pranker smacks his hat again. The other kid tells him if that if he knocks his hat off for the third time, he’d knock his head off.
The pranker has this incredibly stupid grin on, completely oblivious to how extremely serious this guy was and got absolutely clocked in the face when he messed with this guy’s hat a third time. All he could say was, ‘what the heck, man chill out!’ but no one was willing to hear him out.”
Just Stand There
“There was this guy in my aircraft technician class. I’ll call him Jim. The module at the time was about electrical power. We were having a review one Friday before the exam started. Earlier that week, we had covered the batteries used on the aircraft, what types, how they were constructed, etc. The trainer turns to Jim and asks him about the different types, expecting him to say ‘lead-acid, lithium-ion’ and so on. Nope. Jim thinks for a moment and says ‘AA, AAA, C….’
When we got to the hangar for work experience, the same trainer had lost all faith in Jim. We were all assigned jobs in the morning. Myself and another guy were assigned to wings, a few more on the landing gear, all down throughout the group. Then he gets to Jim. He placed an A4 sheet of paper on the ground and told Jim to stand on it so it didn’t blow away. We all laughed, Jim included. The trainer was joking, right?
He wasn’t joking. Jim stood there all day.”
How Many PSI?
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“When I was in high school auto-shop, the group of guys I had for classmates was just great. We were all friends, and each of us knew a fair bit about cars. We also had an amazing teacher and it was just a great experience all around.
Except there was one kid in there named Bailey. And Bailey was a real lemon. I could tell you about a hundred stories about Bailey’s sheer stupidity, but if I had to sum it up best, it’d be this.
Out in the parking lot, there was a car with a flat tire. My teacher says ‘Bailey, take this portable air tank. Fill it to 100psi and then put 30psi in the tire.’
So Bailey goes outside. And about 10 minutes later, I realize he’s still out there. So, I let my teacher know. He gets kind of nervous, and says, ‘Holy cow, I hope he didn’t misunderstand me and he’s trying to put 100psi in the tire!’
So I run out there hoping to stop him before he blows himself up. And I see him there with the air nozzle on the tire valve. But it’s still flat. So I ask, ‘Bailey, what’s wrong!’
‘The thing won’t go!’
So the first thing I do is check the big, obvious air gauge on the tank. Which is bottomed out at zero.
‘Bailey… did you fill this thing with air at all?’
‘Oh, I have to do that?’
‘Uh, yea. You do actually have to fill the thing with air, it doesn’t just come from nowhere.’
So he waddles back inside, where I have to show him how to connect the tank to the air hose, which is pretty easy for anyone who has ever used compressed air, and then it’s time for round two.
So he goes back out to the tire, and I triumphantly go to my teacher and say, ‘Well, he failed to actually fill the tank first, but we’re good now!’
He says, ‘Did you mention the air pressure?’
Oh. Crap.
So I run back out again.
‘Bailey! How much do you have in there?’
‘Uh, I dunno, maybe 90, uh…. p…s…i?’
‘Holy COW! Back away from that thing right now!’ I shout. So he does, and after I cautiously look to see if the tire has begun changing colors, I slowly approach with my pencil gauge, expecting the gauge to blow apart when I connect it. Instead, it registers 20psi.
‘Bailey. Get back inside. I’ll do this..’
‘Duh, okay.’
And that’s Bailey. I could probably fill a book with stories about Bailey.”
A Psychology Master
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“We had a guy in a third-year undergraduate developmental psychology course raise his hand in a full lecture hall and ask the professor, ‘Professor, do infants diagnosed with SIDS get asthma later in life. Are they more likely to develop asthma?’
SIDS stands for sudden infant death syndrome. He just kept pursuing the question and the professor didn’t understand how she could answer it. She thought there was some kind of logic in it that she wasn’t seeing. Finally, some brave girl took the initiative to shout across the room, ‘No, they are not more likely to get asthma, since they are dead. They have died suddenly, and will thus not be at risk of developing asthma.’ It was a great day. He always sat in front of me and I would see him writing just absolutely horrible poetry and song lyrics all the time.”
A Green Thumb
“I once had a property manager who did a bunch of obnoxious things. She managed the property since the homeowners lived out-of-state. My husband and I thought she was greedy and maybe getting money for herself and hiding it from the homeowners for repairs or something like that because of shady seeming things she would do when we had repairs.
Then we mentioned something about gardening.
She said ‘You know, I’ve always wanted to try growing tomatoes and just watering them with salt water. That way, the tomatoes would already be salted when you ate them!’
This is a huge reminder to never attribute to malice what is just pure old-fashioned being dumb as a rock.”
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