You Think I'm Stupid?

My wife, Regina, thinks I’m stupid. I know it because she tells me so every once in a while. Like the other day, I did some little thing absentmindedly and I could see by the look on her face that she thought I am a moron. I said, “I know you think I’m fat and stupid.”

“No, just stupid,” she answered.

I, for one, don’t think I’m stupid. Not really, anyway. Okay. I do some stupid things like mistake the phone for the remote when changing the radio station, but you have to admit, they do look very much alike. It’s not so much stupidity as it is-what’s the word? Senility. So, what we have here is age discrimination. I’m 54, I think. Let’s see: I was born in June of 1955. Ten minus five is five. Change the one in 2010 to what? A zero? Nevermind.

My wife is too politically correct to use the “R” word, especially after the whole Sarah Palin thing. Instead, Regina softens it up a little by saying something like, “You’re a f---ing idiot.” Well, how nice is that? Besides, what kind of a name is Trig? Or, Regina, for that matter? Tell me you don’t picture Aunt Jemima when you hear that name. (You can see from my line of reasoning that I’m not stupid at all, just petty and vindictive.)

I do feel slightly stupid when someone says something that, to them, must seem clear for all to understand. Such as in the movie “Forrest Gump” when the Flying Nun (how stupid is that?) says, “Stupid is as stupid does.” Or, when I was a kid, the anti-drug theme was, “Why do you think they call it dope?” Frankly, I don’t know. Maybe because they don’t call it horseshit? Actually, “horse” and “shit” were street code for heroin, but let’s not split hairs here.

Around our house where behavior rarely reaches above the level of a fourth grader, whenever one of us does something obviously stupid, it is customary to mimic our goat, Misho. For some reason, this idiot animal (all goats are idiots) will sometimes make this bizarre motion with his head by staring straight up into the sky then doing a complete windmill-like rotation. Try it a home sometime. You’ll feel like a total idiot.

If you think he’s an imbecile, you should see our other goat, Marko. This dull-minded creature gets excited and forgets he is castrated or that the other goat is also a male and then mounts Misho from behind and, well, I’m sure you can figure it out for yourselves. Even the horses think they’re morons.

Maybe my wife doesn’t think it’s just me that’s stupid but the whole human race. She may have a point. Try turning on the television and watching what’s going on in the rest of the world. If you aren’t amazed that the world functions at all because it’s filled with so many dummies, I’ll kiss your brainy ass. There is even a whole line of self-help books “For Dummies.” So maybe it’s not that bad to be a retard after all. Maybe the Firesign Theater was right when they named one of their albums “We’re All Bozos on This Bus.”

I even have a button that says “I’m Surrounded by Idiots,” which I’ve never worn for fear that someone will take offense and pin it to my skull. I’m not that stupid. Of course, I could pin it to my lower lip or the tip of my tongue and look, depending on your way of seeing things, either very edgy or utterly asinine.

If you think about it, which can be fairly difficult if you actually are an imbecile, we all tend to get a little nasty and consider others idiots. Democrats think Republicans are idiots and vice versa. Amazingly, they’re both right. George Costanza had a personal revelation in one episode of “Seinfeld” when he realized every decision he ever made was wrong and decided that, in the future, he would do the exact opposite of everything he was naturally inclined to do. It worked great and his life immediately improved.

He showed me the light. It was a very liberating moment for both of us. Most of the decisions we make every day and the stances we take are likely as not, wrong. I knew a college professor with an M.D. who once told me the arguments in academia get so heated because the stakes are so small.

So I am stupid, and proud of it. But, I do have one question for my wife, Regina. If you’re so smart, why the hell did you marry me? Don’t answer that.

Broken Furniture

You have no idea how much is shames me to say I’m down only one pound from 203 to 202pounds this week. The situation is desperate. We’ve become such obese losers that children on the streets of Otis laugh at us when we walk by (that is the few who haven’t become fast-food porkers themselves). The horses are complaining about the weight, clothes don’t fit and worse of all, we’ve damaged all our furniture with our big asses.

Don’t get the idea that the sofa is ruined from us doing any husband-wife stuff. Regina and I are too sexually repressed to even dream of doing anything silly like that, although there was a time a long ago when we regularly gave it a good work out. Unfortunately, Regina, always the multitasker, would insist on watching TV at the same time.

Then, one day while in the throes of animal-like passion, we saw Rev. Jimmy Swaggart on the screen frantically waving a worn out Bible and giving us the evil eye as if he could peer into our living room. Talk about the air going out of a balloon. It put the kibosh on everything. Regina froze up and I cowered in fear of being struck down by a heavenly thunderbolt. But I get the feeling he wasn’t so much disgusted with our behavior as he was looking down his nose at our choice of colors and furniture. Yuck! Poor Jimmy sought refuge with a hooker in a seedy motel, and now an icon at a convent sees more action than our place.

In truth, the sofa's springs are shot from using it the way God intended, which is eating four-course dinners while watching people in Haiti fight for food. When one of the springs recently popped up and impaled our cat, leaving fur, puked up mouse remains and cat shit everywhere, we knew we had to get new furniture.

I’ve learned that furniture stores are generally one of two types. There’s the kind that carries garish stuff for low-class hicks who eat TV dinners while watching NASCAR, and there’s the type that carries high-quality stuff for sophisticated people who cook their own meals and eat with their feet on the coffee table while watching Baywatch. That’s us, so we needed the better stuff.

There are also two basic types of furniture, cloth and leather. While leather sounds a little risqué for the two of us, it’s great for cleaning cat puke. The problem is you have to get a feeling for what best suits you at the furniture store. These are generally public places and things can get awkward.

“Go ahead and lay back in it they way you would at home,” the saleswoman said to us when we were eyeing a leather sectional last week. I’m sure lots of people feel the way I do about this. I’m sorry, but I just don’t feel right lying down on a piece of furniture like a slug while other people are around-even with my clothes on. Forget about the Jimmy Swaggart thing. It’s even worse when you’re trying out mattresses. You feel like a complete idiot. You might as well be trying out toilet paper.

“No, really,” she said. “Feel free to make yourself comfortable. Put your feet up like you would at home.” (She didn’t know we have horses and we're knee-deep in manure half the time). Now, the last thing I want to do is get too comfortable in a furniture store. Only one of two things is going to happen. Either a conditioned response will set in and I’ll become hungry for a four-course meal, or I’ll get too relaxed and wake up two hours later with my shoe laces tied together and a clown face painted on me. That’s what I would do to some goof who came into my store and started snoring, especially if he was another Realtor.

To make matter worse, we heard ourselves saying things like, “Wow” and “Oh, my,” and “Oh, yes that feels real nice,” and “God, just feel that leather,” which told us it was time to pick something out and get the hell out of there. We did settle on buying a new leather sectional which should be delivered in a few weeks. In the meantime, it you know someone looking for a good deal on a matching sofa-love seat set, tell them to give us a call. The springs are shot, but the fabric, at least since Jimmy Swaggart, is stain free. Except for the cat incident.