DUMB AND DUMBER

Just a few hours ago I was in the Taco Bell a few blocks down from here, buying my groceries for the weekend (in the past couple days, I've seen four or five too many cockroaches around my sink — I'll have to decontaminate the whole kitchen). With tax, my purchase of a few Chicken Quesedillas and a few more Bean Burritos added up to exactly $13. I handed the woman behind the counter a $20 bill. I looked back down at my computer printout of the semi-official history of Suck.com, which I had been reading since I left work. A moment later, I glanced back up and watched her punch the following numbers into a calculator sitting next to the register:

 20.00
-13.00
______
     7

Deedee — I had time, in this interval, to check the clock (just after noon), my own reading material (engrossing), the mood of my fellow customers (restless) as well as her uniform name-tag (Deedee, of course) — then finally handed me seven dollars.

Whatever. The fact that she left school without being able to marshal elementary integers through her head (and for the record, I am certainly not a number person) was not my problem. What mattered was that I got my full order, which doesn't always happen.

With lunch/dinner/lunch/dinner (vemin aside, I'll surely sleep through the breakfast hours until work resumes next Wednesday) in hand, I walked two blocks up to the liquor store to buy a half-gallon of Smirnoff to complement the orange juice and Red Bull I would soon mix it with.

Walking out of the liquor store on Florida, I crossed the street, heading for my place.

It's probably worth mentioning that I had my iPod blaring for the entire time since I'd left the Watergate about 45 minutes earlier, removing my headphones only long enough to interact with Deedee and tell the dude at the liquor store which bottle I wanted.

As I crossed the street, I heard a: "Hey!" I looked back. Just some guy. Didn't make any sense to me.

Arriving at the front door of my apartment building, I finally realized what I'd done, and what that yelling was all about: I'd left my half-gallon of Smirnoff back at the liquor store. So I dropped off the food (keeping it warm in my presumably cockroach-free oven) and headed back down to pick up my rightful vodka. Walking back in, the guy behind the counter gave me a mild lecture (about the headphones, I think) before handing me the liquor I'd already purchased.

I suppose there might be something to be said here about different kinds of intelligence — spatial ability versus attention span — but if so, it's certainly incomplete. I've always been one to draw a distinction between raw intelligence and wisdom, between smarts and street smarts, but I'm not sure what to make of this. I've always been sure that, at least, I possessed the latter attributes.

Considering these two events, as far as I'm concerned, we're both idiots.

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posted by WWB at 9:23 PM |