Out of the Mouths of Fools

I have a friend who has a very specific mantra that he loves to repeat when trying to reconcile the absurdities we all face on a daily basis, such as when a driver cuts you off for no apparent reason or a fast food clerk who says something totally unrelated to the simple task of ordering a quickie meal. He says, “Jeff, you have to remember that ninety nine percent of the population is retarded.” Now, we all know in our heart of hearts that that can’t be true. However, there are times when I wonder if he’s right.
Now, before you think this is going to be an elitist diatribe about how much better I am than everyone else, or dismiss me as a sad little man heaping derision upon others to make myself feel better, hear me out. I want to present a few examples of people I’ve met recently in my travels that utterly defy my attempts to classify them as normal human beings. No one can say for certain what “normal” is, and I obviously can’t meet every person in the world, so there’s no way I can say that ninety nine percent are idiots, but I offer a few examples that really have me worried that my buddy is right.
Taco Hell
I don’t eat fast food much, not because I’m a health nut, but because most of it just tastes bad. Once in a while I’ll get a double cheeseburger and a drink (for about 2 dollars) when I have a long motorcycle drive, for instance, and I don’t want to be hungry. The meal itself isn’t satisfying in the way a good rib eye steak is, but it is adequate in that I’m not hungry while I’m riding and, hopefully, it was non toxic (at least in the short run). I really don’t keep up with fast food menu changes; I just hope that whatever it is that I order is the same as it was in years previous. So, it was with this blissful ignorance that I rolled into a Taco Bell not long ago (for the first time in a long time) to get a cheap, quickie lunch. I wanted a Mexican pizza. Now, I hate olives, so I told the girl behind the counter that I wanted one with no olives. She practically froze, and made a quick point of telling me that they were out of olives, and looked at me expectantly to see how I would deal with this information. I didn’t know what to say. I wouldn’t care if every olive on the planet was gone. I couldn’t understand why their lack of olives would impact my order in any way, so I said, “OK, I’ll have it without sour cream”, and that was what it took to get my order from her station to the back where it could be made. She took my money with a smile and busied herself with the next customer, satisfied that she had averted a fast food catastrophe. I wondered if I really wanted to eat there. Turns out the Mexican pizzas aren’t nearly as good as I remember them.
Snake Oil
I was working in Pontiac, Michigan, standing outside (in the cold), smoking. It was a factory of sorts, a union place where the talk among the employees is the same no matter where in the country I go, although in Michigan, it’s always worse. Generally, the conversations I overhear are comprised of a) How terribly inefficient the management is, b) Schemes to use the union to make the management look foolish, and c) What their plans are when they hit the lottery. Once in a while, though, you run across that person who carries himself as a genius among fools, a jailhouse lawyer-type whose sole source of self esteem comes from spouting big words to impress the gullible, words he hopes no one else in the vicinity will understand. It’s wrong to judge people by the way they look or dress, so I’ll leave his ridiculous attire out (ask me about it sometime), and stick to telling what he told me. He told me, in a matter-of-fact tone, with a straight face, that he knew how to cure cancer, all cancer. In fact, he said that he had built a machine out of ham radio parts that could do it, and sold it to a doctor who had no idea such technology existed. I wasn’t quite sure which tack I should take with my response, so I bought myself some time by asking how his ham radio machine worked against cancer. He told me that very specific radio waves will kill viruses, and that cancer is a virus, and that all cancers are caused by the same virus. I wanted to respond at this point, but he was on a roll, so I let him run with it. He went on to explain how the pharmaceutical companies have kept a lid on this stunning treatment since the fifties, silencing anyone who dares to retrieve and disperse this wondrous, vital news to the world, because like diamonds, if people knew the truth, they’d be out of business. Indeed, the medical and pharmaceutical companies are one and the same (controlled by the New Illuminati) who conspired years ago to keep people just a little bit sick all the time so they’d have to buy medicines. It’s the perfect scam, he said. People will always want to be healthy, and they’ll spend every last dime chasing that carrot, and the medicine men will be steering the horse. I was literally biting my tongue. The parting words from this character were that I should look up Royal Rife, the man who first invented the cancer killing machine. He said this as if it were a secret name to be spoken only among those who could be trusted. Well, after a very little bit of research, I found that Royal Rife was debunked and dismissed in the fifties. The “lost” knowledge that the smoking loony could, alone in his basement duplicate with Radio Shack components never really worked, and everybody knows that, except this guy. I wanted to ask him his opinion of the government’s role in the 9/11 disaster, but had to go back to work. I always love hearing that one.
Gay By Choice
I met a guy in California earlier this year who was a good guy to work with. Unless you’re independently rich, you have to work, and some jobs just plain suck. The trouble, though, with a crappy job, and perhaps what makes it even crappier, is the people you have to work with. A pedestrian job can quickly turn into a traffic jam of frustration and anger when dealing with morons, so it’s always nice to work with people I can at least get along with. This guy was extraordinary in that he expected the work to be done quickly and efficiently, but it was also important to him that his workers were as happy as could be considering the circumstances. We had to work, but we didn’t have to toil. Anyway, this guy thought it would be a good idea for us all to get together one Saturday night and call out for pizza and have a few drinks at his home, and generally socialize. We’re all transient workers, so it’s good now and then to have some camaraderie when we’re all a long way from home. When I arrived, most of the guys we were working with in LA were already there, eating and drinking and having as good a time as one can have when on the road. Our host was there, of course, and he was as affable as always. He was wearing a black t-shirt with a design and some words on it; I thought it was a concert shirt. When I spoke to him, though, and had a chance to read it, I noticed that it was a religious message and not a rock band shirt. I thought that was odd, because he never mentioned anything about religion; he swore and gossiped like the rest of us. He said he was a born-again Christian (as he sampled my wonderful vodka and fruit juice concoction), but that he didn’t proselytize to anyone who didn’t ask. Fair enough, I thought, and that was the end of that. He did, however, say the oddest thing a while later. He said that homosexuals, all homosexuals, chose the life they’re living. Since we were all friendly and we were all drinking, I told him that I didn’t believe it was a choice. In my opinion, you’re either gay or you’re not, Hollywood weirdoes notwithstanding. This subject, however, was one he was adamant about, and he wanted to explain why he thought the way he did. He reasoned that the only reason gays were gay was because they had a psychological problem, a deep-seated self loathing; their behavior is a manifestation of a cry for help. And then, of course, he said that all of those problems could be overcome if they would just give themselves over to Jesus. That was the end of the discussion for me. I’m not going to convince a vodka swilling, oddly discrete bible thumper of anything with logic. I am still friends with this guy, and I hope I get the chance to work with him again sometime soon. We won’t be discussing anything remotely religious, and he’s OK with that, so I am too. It’s just funny how sometimes even the people who seem relatively normal can come up with some real gems.
I have no doubt than an essay similar to this one describing my own foolish notions could be written. I’d do it myself, but that would make me a little…weird. The whole point here is that we all have our quirks and we have all said or done something that would make others question our ability to walk around without hurting ourselves. Sometimes, though, it’s good to run into people like I’ve described here. It makes me feel a little more normal, whatever that is.