If you’re going to understand the complete essence of stupidity, you’re going to have to first agree to not be stupid yourself. Second, you’ll have to look at the stupidity of Man. In all the time that I have been studying the essence of stupidity, I have come across no creature in the world as positively dumb as human beings.
I have looked at many animals, and while they cannot tell you the answer to questions like what two plus two equals, or what colour the sky is, they will eat when they’re hungry, sleep when they’re tired, mate when they need to reproduce, and fight only out of necessity. Their’s may be a simple existence, but at least they don’t pay for something and then drive away without it.
Don’t question it.
How people can be so completely blind, so utterly stupid, honestly baffles me. Some use the excuse of self-preservation, that whole ignorance is bliss thing. There are others who manage it by sheer force of will, the if I don’t look, it’s not there thing. Then, there are the ones who are simply people with hopelessly vacant minds. Those poor souls.
This story has all three types of stupid people in it. You have the boy, Ronald, Ronny to his friends, who is stupidly trying to protect himself from the pain of the world, an impossible task if you ask me. You have the girl, Sally, who is determined to find something that doesn’t exist. Then you have all the stupid people that they meet along the way. Those poor souls.
To say that Ronny and Sally hit it off right away would be a lie. In fact, they hated each other before they became friends. Ronny wasn’t the type to make a good first impression. Then they worked together, just one shift at the Tim Horton’s where they were employed, and realized how stupid the hate had been. Sally was never quite sure how it happened. It might have been that he asked if she was okay when she hit her finger against the soup well, or it might have been because she is just the kind of person to become friends with anyone who is willing.
Don’t question it.
She would say, “Do you want to do something?”
He would answer, “Like what?”
She would say, “I don’t know.”
He would answer, “Okay.”
Sally’s friends became Ronny’s friends. There was Thomas, Dominik, Brianne, and Matthew, just to name a few. They would get together often, having parties, hanging out, laughing and carrying on. Those were the Golden Days, if you will allow me to use so cliché a term.
But it wasn’t long before Sally and Ronny discovered feelings that ran a little deeper than friendship, and both reacted accordingly.
Ronny refused to admit he had feelings for Sally.
Sally tried to use other people to forget the fact that she had feelings for Ronny, knowing that he would never really let her in. Even after only a few weeks, she knew him quite well.
They continued to try to be friends for a long time.
Don’t question it.
They would joke about the customers who would come into their work during the graveyard shift.
Sally would say, “You’d think, if they see the chairs on the tables they would sit at one of the tables without the chairs on them. Or at least put the chairs up when they’re finished. Can they not see me sweeping on the other side of the lobby?” She would shake her head. “I don’t understand people.”
Ronny would shrug at the stupidity of people. “Don’t question it.”
Sometimes someone would come into the store and ask one of the two of them, “Are you open?”
Sally would usually grimace as she replied, “Yes,” through clenched teeth.
Later she would say to Ronny, “Can they not read the big sign out there in big red letters, ‘Always Open’?”
Ronny would reply, “No, they can’t read. And they can’t figure out that if the door is open and they can get in here then, yes, we are open.”
She would smile and say, “Don’t question it.”
But the stupidity wasn’t confined to them and to their customers; even some of their friends had the stupid gene. Like Thomas and his friend Emily.
Thomas told Sally that he and Emily were just friends. And maybe Thomas wanted more, but he’d never share that secret. Sally knew that the only secrets he could keep were his own. Besides, Emily had a boyfriend named Sam, whom, Sally knew, Thomas detested. But he explained that he put up with Sam in order to remain Emily’s friend. Thomas was doing well, too, until he told Emily that he didn’t like Sam and she called him two-faced for being nice to someone he hates. He told her all the reasons he was not going to fight with Sam, but that poor soul, Emily, just wouldn’t understand.
“I’ve tried to explain it to her,” he told Sally one night, “why I don’t want to fight with him. She doesn’t get it. I told her that I would rather be her friend than be his enemy. I’ve explained that he and I work in the same building and it would cause tension if we had a fight. We could both get into trouble for it. I’m just getting sick of the whole thing. It’s like she’s listening without actually hearing what I’m saying. She thinks I’m being two-faced, but it’s not like I’m acting like his friend when I hate him. I just hate him and leave him alone.”
Sally nodded. “I understand. How come people are so stupid sometimes?”
He shook his head sadly. “I don’t know. Just don’t question it.”
Still, when Emily and Sam broke up, Thomas asked her out. Sally knew it was a bad idea.
“Thomas, just be careful,” she told him.
He wasn’t.
Don’t question it.
About a week after they started dating, Emily listened to what many people told her to do and dumped Thomas. The poor soul was heartbroken.
But Sally had other friends, like Matthew, who was not so stupid, and he told Sally that she needed to stop what she felt for Ronny; good, strong advice. When Matthew came in at three in the morning to do the baking, Sally would be doing dishes and they would discuss the problems she was having.
“Just let it go,” Matthew told her once.
She looked at her friend, allowing all the confusion she felt show in her eyes, and she shrugged helplessly.
“I can’t.”
Don’t question it.
Unfortunately, Ronny was better at turning off his feelings than Sally would ever be. She tried hard to pretend for his sake, but in the end, Ronny knew her too well. Just as she knew him better than he thought she did. They could read each other’s minds and finally, Sally had read too much.
He kept turning away so finally she turned to someone who didn’t.
One night was all it took for Ronny to feel justified in keeping his heart from Sally. He built his wall higher and thicker than it had ever been before and Sally couldn’t get through anymore. Weeks went by and not a word was spoken on the long nights of graveyard. Sally tried to call a truce, but Ronny was disinclined to venture into the realm of friendship again.
Don’t question it.
Eventually, the inevitable happened and Ronny let down his guard enough to make a joke. Sally wondered if everything was going to be all right. She kept a little back, just in case – finally learning from her mistakes. It was a good idea.
One day, they left Tim Horton’s, for good and together, like they had said they would. And when she walked to his home (her bus was going to be another half an hour) they talked.
She said, “You know, this means we don’t ever have to see each other again.”
He replied, “We will.”
She believed him.
Don’t question it.
The thing is, he didn’t lie – exactly. They saw each other a few more times, and then he stopped answering when she called and so she stopped calling.
One year later, nearly to the very day it had all begun, whatever it was, ended. Her heart had been broken and his had been locked away. The glimpse that they saw was gone.
Don’t question it.
Will either of them learn from their mistakes before it’s too late? Who knows? The thing is, I have been studying people for a long time now, even before Sally met Ronny, trying to figure out where this essence of stupidity comes from, trying to understand people. In all that time I have learned a couple of things.
Simply, don’t question it. All you come up with is that humans really are stupid and you realize that you don’t understand people at all. The second thing I learned is that it’s people who make people foolish. You see, the thing about stupid people, what really makes them stupid, is whether or not they learned from their mistakes. If they do, then they aren’t really dense, they just made a mistake and mistakes should be forgiven. If they don’t learn from what they did wrong, that’s when you run into that essence again. These people lack common sense, and it’s sad. But don’t question it.
