I’ve had a serious case of the stupids this week and what really scares me about the whole thing is the week ain’t over yet. I mean really, you’d think after 52+ years of some rather intense, highly varied experiences I’d at least learn to recognize that I have, in fact, a case of the stupids going on. No, let me rephrase that. At the least I’d have learned to not only recognize that I have, in fact, a case of the stupids going on but not to attempt to do anything more complicated than breathing and eating during this stupid period.
I consider myself a reasonably intelligent sort of guy backed up with some rather interesting past experiences. Experiences that I hope I would have learned some sort of good from–like common sense? It seems not. It certainly didn’t keep me from hauling out my beloved old 1968 Cub Cadet lawn tractor yesterday and attempting to mow my swamp lawn after it’s been subjected to several days of tropical style downpours. And it certainly didn’t keep me from moronically attempting to mow the narrow strip of grass between the flag poles and the 60 foot red cedar hedge and getting that half ton of lawn tractor stuck up to the axles in mud. Nor did it keep me from breaking my already busted back trying to lever the thing out with an old 4×4 post I had kicking around–which didn’t work by the way.
And no, I didn’t take a picture of it. I was afraid I’d drop the camera in the mud.
It’s out though thanks to a sudden attack of lucidity, my old ’95 Jeep Cherokee and a set of old tire chains that I used to drag my poor lawn tractor out of the mud. Unfortunately the attack of lucidity didn’t last.
Today, with the case of stupids still in full swing I attempted to write out checks, the bills having to be paid and all that. This included our water and sewer bill that I was going to deliver at “city” hall later this afternoon after I dropped the payments at the post office.
I’ll state now for the record that all the bills including the water and sewer did actually get paid as planned but not before 1 voided check, several corrections to the checkbook register, 1 torn up envelope on which I wrote my name on as the addressee instead of the actual party I was sending to, close to a dozen trips up and down the stairs (I’d go up for one thing I’d forgotten and end up leaving something I shouldn’t have been carrying up there that I’d have to go back up for immediately after I’d gone down again) and a whole lot of yelling at myself for being stupid!
And thank heavens I didn’t run into anything (or anyone for that matter) while driving downtown.
Once I finally arrived back home I firmly planted my rear end in my chair in front of my computer display and strenuously avoided logging into any of my accounts. Just plain not-logged-in browsing I figured was a fairly safe haven for me and any innocent bystanders that happened to be virtually standing in my general vicinity. So far I have managed not to blow the computer to smithereens–yet.
But it didn’t stop me from logging into my own site and writing up this here post though, did it?
I understand that aging is inevitable but as this process continues in my case I’ve become increasingly aware that humans do indeed grow too soon old and too late smart (old Dutch saying). I mean it just seems to be a person’s lot in life that when they finally gather enough experience and live long enough to actually learn from those experiences, even the bad ones, by the time we finally learn enough to smarten up, we find ourselves too old to remember what we learned in the first place.
