Coffee Filters

My niece is in college and she is a bright, indeed a very bright child; I should say woman all-be-it a young woman of 21 years. She is surrounded (for the most part) by bright people for a large majority of the day, i.e. professors, administrators, and other bright students. She gets straight A’s and is hoping to become a psychologist, as is her boyfriend, who is also very intelligent plus a genuine nice guy.

However, they don’t live in the real world full-time yet; the world where most of us, either at work or on the road or at the (any) store, are surrounded by morons. Of course there is the occasional dummy who shouldn’t be in the classroom but can afford it somehow or the rare teacher or book-keeper who is only there because of tenure, but for the most part they are hanging around intelligent people, and thus think that the world is full of genius in approximately the same high percentages. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Years ago the dummies who only graduated because they were a football or track star or a cheerleader or perhaps because they were well-liked (or their parents were) would find a job, none too demanding in the brain area, at a mill or working for the city doing something that needed to be done anyway. When one went to the hardware store or grocery store the intelligent ones were out front helping the customers and the “dummies” were in the back, cleaning up; where they should be.

Today if you need a job but can’t add or subtract basic numbers you are promptly hired and made the cashier, with the reasoning that the cash register does all the math anyway. Duh. What a bad idea, but it seems to have caught on everywhere. If someone can’t read well but needs a job they are put to stocking the shelves, which is why you find the coffee filters anywhere but near the coffee. And don’t bother asking where they might be unless you like wild goose chases, just find them on your own by process of elimination, like I do.

Ask any cab driver or truck driver or bus driver how many people, per day, pull out or walk out into traffic without looking, the answer is hard to believe; it’s in the hundreds on a normal day, worse after a big game or concert or bad weather or even just regular rush hour, an every day, twice a day affair which you’d think people would be used to, but I digress. These are the same people who have to find the manager to identify a head of cabbage or a pair of pants that is for sale in their store before they can ring it up, or bring you an axe when you ask for a hammer.

The dummies are out there. We used to lock them up or at least keep them in the back, but now, with many of our basic jobs gone over-seas and most of the state-run institutions closed or scaled down, we have to put them somewhere, do something with them. I just wish it wasn’t at the point of sale, when I’ve already decided what I want and simply want to pay for my stuff and go home with it…….

Oh how I miss my short time in college surrounded by so much intelligence. It was invigorating, and I too was almost seduced into believing that the world operated on the same level. Thankfully my family, so poor and so dumb that they thought a taxi-cab driver was rich, kept me grounded in reality. There are more of them than us. I may be flattering myself, but it’s the only thing keeping me from going insane at times…..