With 6 billion people in the world, I feel safe in ticking off 5.9 billion of them, so I don’t mind speaking my mind (within reason, appropriate to the situation). Many is the time I’ve found myself at parties where I would encounter a boor such as PT. Nearly as many is the time where I’ve said the situational equivalent to what you were thinking. If it offends her and gets her to leave me be, I win. Anyone who’s opinion of me is swayed by her, I have no desire of knowing. That’s a double-win. Plus, there are usually people who, like you, were trapped and too ‘polite’ to say anything, and they are often pleased when someone does state the obvious. Now you have new people with whom you share a common interest to talk to. A triple win!
I can be, and am, a polite person (for a NYer - Southerners opinions may differ). However, when someone wears cluelessness/ignorance as a badge of honor, I see no reason to hold my tongue.
A former business partner of mine had a wacko wife. It wasn’t one thing, just a whole lot of little things.
A good example was her treatment of credit cards. She seemed to believe that they were gifts and making payments on them was optional. She bought a set of tires for her car and charged them on a card. A few months later she sold the car, yet was astounded that the card company continued to ask for payments on her card balance. She reasoned that, since she no longer owned the car with the tires on it, she no longer had to make payments on their purchase. She thought it completely crazy that she should have to pay for the tires once she no longer owned them. She even called the new owner of the car and tried to get him to call the card company and get the balance for the tire purchase transfered to his own card. She figured, he had the tires now, so he should be paying on them.
I had some interesting discussions with her, as it was often amusing. We once had an interesting debate about the solar system because she was convinced that the sun and the universe revolved around the earth. No explanation or show of proof could convince her otherwise. The earth was, simply, the center of the universe, and all things revolved around it. Later her husband told me that she lied to me about about. He said she really believes that the universe revolves around her.
Which reminds me of what I told in the last clueless-people thread. Back when I was still living in Texas, I had just returned from a trip to Mexico. Sitting in my regular bar, I was chatting with this girl I knew from the bar – we were both regulars – and she asked me where I’d been. “Mexico,” I said. "Where’s that? she said. I laughed at her little joke. I stopped laughing when I saw that I had hurt her feelings and made her feel bad. “I’m not smart like you,” she said in all seriousness. Very sad, but she was not kidding. I knew her well enough that I should have known that right away. A native-born, life-long Texan, and she honestly had no clue where Mexico was.
Oooooh, one more. Back during the dotcom boom, a friend of mine and I were sitting in a bar, discussing computers, etc. A guy next to us sagely advised that we buy up all the netspace we could, because “it’s just like real estate. There’s only so much of it out there, and when it’s all gone, it’s gone forever!”
That’s amazing. I wonder how people like her make it through school in this country. I can understand maybe not being able to point out Wisconsin on a unlabelled map, but not knowing where Mexico is as a resident of the state of Texas?
Forgive me if I’ve told this story before. Several years ago, I worked with a woman who was a nice, devout Christian, but not all that bright. A bunch of us were talking one day and she wondered if she was sinning because she’d listened to country music while driving to work that day rather than the local Christian radio station (hold your comments about country music, please). I told her of course she wasn’t sinning. After all, God created music – just look at the stuff Bach wrote! She asked me, in all seriousness, who Bach was.
There was this guy I know, who was talking with his wife on the subject of Meat, more specifically what exactly meat is.
Said guy opens his mouth first to explain that meat was like a layer under the skin.
“Sort of I guess,” she says, “you do know it is muscle?”
“No its a layer just benieth the skin.”
“The meat layer?”
“Uhhhh…”
“What? Is this a layer between the muscle and the skin?”
“Uhhhhhh…errrr sure”
“Can you show me your meat layer by pinching it?”
“yeah…”
“Here let me” she says reaching over pinching his forehead…
She sits back and says “Well you’ve convinced me you have a meat layer”
Lesson:
Never talk with authority about something you really haven’t thought much about since you were a kid.
Never discuss topics with people whose occupation has something to do with said topic.
My wife has never let me live that one down… oop.
By the way, my reasoning came from a diagram of a cross section of skin I saw in health class years ago… Somehow I assumed the thick slab below the top layer was … uhh meat…
When I was in college, I was working with the stereotypical ditzy girl (not blonde though). It is amazing how many guys will ignore clueless in a pretty girl. For me, however, it was a turn-off that her body couldn’t overcome.
One year, as my birthday was approaching, one of my friends let it be known at work. Personally, I believe that if no one wishes you “Happy Birthday”, it didn’t happen and you don’t get older. It is about a day or 3 before my birthday (which occurs at the end of a month with 30 days which I won’t say for reasons mentioned earlier), and she comments, “It’s your birthday on (the 30th)” to which I replied, “No, my birthday is the 31st.” The 30th comes around, and she says, “Aren’t you excited, it’s your birthday tomorrow.” I keep my mouth shut, as there is nothing exciting about my birthday (which it was at that time). Next day, she wishes me a happy birthday, to which I sadly inform her that today is the first, not the 31st, and that she missed my birthday.
It took hours for the light bulb to go off. I’m fairly certain I had her convinced that she had just had a day off.
But what goes around, comes around. The friend who had let out the date of my birthday was my roommate. And he started dating her. So even after I had left that job, I still had to encounter her stunning cluelessness quite often. Plus, at his request, I had to be nicer to her (not necessarily nice, but nicer).
I once met some guys from Calgary - university students - who believed Calgary was the capital of Alberta. This is equivalent to a citizen of Los Angeles not knowing that the capital of California is Sacramento.
They weren’t kidding, or engaging in “Calgary’s better than Edmonton” trash talk. They were dead serious.
And Ogre’s story isn’t that remarkable. I have known two adults, who graduated from high school, who did not know who Adolf Hitler was, and had never heard of World War II.
It’s no stupider than having to tell the denizens of NYC that their city is not the actual capital of the State, and that there’s place called Albany that’s kinda important. (If only for all the bureaucrats who reside there…)
And I beat Anaamika to making this same point, too.
State? Pishposh. Too many NewYorkers seem to think that their city is the center of the Universe. That everyone else is jealous and wants to be them, and/or gives a shit about what happens there.
It is about a day or 3 before my birthday (which occurs at the end of a month with 30 days which I won’t say for reasons mentioned earlier), and she comments, “It’s your birthday on (the 30th)” to which I replied, “No, my birthday is the 31st.” The 30th comes around, and she says, “Aren’t you excited, it’s your birthday tomorrow.” I keep my mouth shut, as there is nothing exciting about my birthday (which it was at that time). Next day, she wishes me a happy birthday, to which I sadly inform her that today is the first, not the 31st, and that she missed my birthday.