Four Nerds

In the past, I have made many great rants both here and elsewhere about the idiocy of the human race. I have for a long time believed that you should be allowed to slap stupid people. (For which I know I would get slapped often) I have said that if you could bottle and burn stupidity, the human race would never again need to bother with fossil fuels. Mind you, I am not talking about people who have suffered brain damage or mental retardation. I am talking of ordinary people who just seem to do stupid shit all the time.

Well, I come to you today a humbled man, true believers. A reminder that I, like everyone else, can be an idiot. I am sure I am making too much of a pretty minor thing, but I still feel like a moron. I have always counted myself as a relatively intelligent person. Not a genius, to be sure. I will probably never win a Nobel Prize, nor do I have a membership in Mensa. I can, however, go for an entire week without saying "Duh."

This morning I arrived at work, twenty minutes late, because I forgot my cell phone and my sunglasses and had to go back for them. No big deal, people forget stuff at home all the time, especially early in the morning when they are still not fully awake.

Anyway, I got into the office, made a phone call, checked my email, and then realized that once again, I forgot my cell phone, this time in the car. I went outside and opened the passenger side door. It should be noted, dear readers, that I was standing on the sidewalk, so that the door was several inches lower in relation to my body. I reached in, grabbed my phone, and slammed the door shut.

And that's when it happened. A searing pain ran across the left side of my chest. I went OW! I hear a gasp from a passerby, followed by a sympathetic "Ooh!" No, it wasn't a heart attack, my friends. I hadn't been hit by a passing cyclist. I had not been shot, nor had I been stabbed.

I had slammed the top corner of the car door into the left side of my body.

There is now a two-inch gash running along my ribcage, about level with the bottom of my sternum. I look like I have been in a knife fight. Admittedly, the wound looks kinda cool, but it still hurts like hell.

Now, I have both heard and seen people slam body parts in doors. A finger, a hand, even a foot. These are perfectly normal accidents. The extremities are always vulnerable to misfortune. That's why God or evolution or whatever you believe, didn't put any major organs in our arms and legs.

But what kind of idiot do you have to be to slam your fucking abdomen in a car door?! What part of you has to malfunction to not realize that your torso is too close to the door? What failure of depth perception and basic motor skills in involved? What chances of survival does one have when he can't even protect the largest part of his body?

So, I stand before you as an idiot. It's not the first dumb thing I have done (this week). It will not be the last, I assure you. It does serve as a reminder that despite all of our bitching about the dumb shit that people do; we're all in the same boat. It's the one thing that all of us truly have in common. We're all prone to real acts of complete and utter idiocy.

I still hate stupid people. It's part of the great hypocrisy that is me. DUUUUUHHH....