On this week’s opener segment the guys talked about the need for a “stupid” sign which stupid people would be required to wear. Very funny.
And it reminded me of when I was a teenager and worked on a cattle range near Durango Colorado for a summer job. The ranch was big. Really big. Sized not acres, but in 100’s of square miles! When you were standing in the middle of it, everything you could see for miles in every direction was part of the ranch.
And this was in a tourist area. There’s a steam train from Durango to Silverton which draws the tourists like flies during the summer months. And every once in a while one of these tourists would find their way to the ranch, usually because they got lost. But they’d stop by, ask directions, say hello to us ranch hands, ask if we have any cowboy stories like they see in the movies, you know problems with gun slingers, fist fights with the sheep ranchers over fences, etc. We’d say “no, just treating the cows for “pink eye” (a common malady with cows) is all we do”.
But sometimes the owner of the ranch would be there, and he liked to talk up the tourists, give them something to write home about. Because he knew eventually the tourist would ask “How many cattle do you have?”. And after he said 10,532 or something like that, the tourist would invariably say “How do you count them all?”
The rancher – he’d wink at us – and say to the tourist “Well, we hired a Ph D from Colorado State University to help us with that. What he does, he counts all their feet, and divides by 4.”
Then the tourist, a little puzzled, would drive away, and the owner of the ranch would laugh and say “Tourists should announce themselves by a big “Stupid” bumper sticker on their car!”
Jerry Springer, Maury Povich and Honey Boo-Boo are making it possible for everyone to laugh at people more stupid than themselves. It makes us all feel a little smarter. And some of us need all the help we can get, TSM.
On my way home one afternoon I saw a FWD car facing down a sloping driveway toward the street jacked up on an OE screw jack with the front wheel removed and rear wheel off the ground and a large man under the car apparently attempting to pull the CV axle out. I stopped and suggested that he stack the spare and the front wheel up and place them under the car to catch it in case it rolled off the jack. In no uncertain terms the DIYer told me to mind my own business because he know exactly what he was doing. I excused myself and continued home and he got the car back on the road without being injured so he was right… And I was stupid for for sticking my nose in his business.
Same here @Rod. I don’t have a picture but I did see one of my neighbors with a 5 gallon plastic pickle bucket underneath his rear axle. I guess it held because I still see the guy walking around from time to time.
When I was a kid I went to a local salvage yard for a front hub for my '55 Chevy. They guy jacked one up and put a concrete block under the car to hold it up. My dad was with me and said “That ain’t safe.” The guy responded he’d always done it that way, and it was fine. He took the hub off, and stood up. Then, while we were standing there, the concrete block crumbled. My dad informed him that he’d been sitting with his legs under that car a couple of minutes earlier, and he was a very lucky man.
Sheer stupidity or a death wish are the only explanations for a lot of this stuff…
Like in the example cited by Rod Knox, I’ve made a polite suggestion a few times about a looming problem and the usual response is basically go mind your own business, it’s covered.
