Haven’t actually ranted in a while. And I’m feeling intolerant today. So let’s do that…

Are people just getting stupider or is just that I’m getting older?

I’m coming up on my thirties now and it seems like every day that goes by I catch myself saying something you’d normally find as a cliché popping out of the mouth of some old person on television. I really wouldn’t be surprised to catch myself rolling my eyes and muttering, “These kids today…”

Come to think of it…

And I don’t mean this is some condescending way. I don’t feel especially superior in asking this question. I’m actually serious. And I’m kinda getting worried. I don’t really want to believe that people are mysteriously getting stupider all around me but I can’t find any reason not to believe it. As far fetched as it might appear to be at first blush, the evidence just keeps mounting up.

I asked the bagger at my local grocery store if he would put the cans of fruit in a separate bag from the cans of vegetables. I might as well have bonked him on the forehead with a shovel.

“Uh…”
“Because the fruit isn’t for me. I’m buying it for my neighbor.”
“…”
“That way I can just drop the cans of fruit off with them without having to dig for it.”
“I…uh…”
“Here. These four cans. These right here. Just put them in their own little bag, you know?”
“You want the bread in a separate bag?”
“The…huh? No, just the fruit.”
“The cans of fruit?”
“Well…yeah. These right here. These four cans of fruit. Put these in their own bag with nothing else.”
“What about the bread?”
“Who said anything about the bread? Put these cans of fruit in their own…Look, can you just give me a bag? I’ll bag it myself.”
“I can do it.”
“Are you sure?”
<two minutes later>
“You want me to carry these for you?”
“No. Thanks.”

And how often to baggers offer to carry your groceries out for you? Like, never. But I had to pass because the idea actually caused me anxiety.

Same grocery store, a couple of weeks ago.
To the cashier: “Can you give me eight quarters with that?”
“Huh?”
“Eight quarters. I’m going to buy some of those little tattoo things from the gumball machines over there.”
“You want quarters?”
“Yeah. Oh. And some dimes.”
“Uh…okay, hold on….You want a dollah werf of dimes?”
“Yeah, that’s fine.”
“Hold on. I’m out of dimes.”
“Well, I just need a couple. Whatever.”
Cashier to a neighboring cashier: “You gotta rolla dimes?”
Me again: “No, hold up. I just need two. Make whatever change you like.”
“I only got two dimes.”
“Well…that’s how many I need.”
“Hold on…how many quarters you want?”
“Eight. Eight quarters and two dimes.”
“Hold on…”
<cash register goes haywire>
*Sigh*
“Hold on… <to another cashier> Call Jim.”
Other cashier: “Huh?”
“Call Jim.”
<five minutes later>
“How many quarters you wanted?”
“None. No quarters. I don’t want any quarters at all. In fact, I want you to be absolutely certain there are no quarters whatsoever in my change.”
“Huh?”
“I’ve changed my mind. I just want to leave.”
Cashier, snidely: “Well, so-rry.”

There’s a high school kid that came by the other day, offering to cut my lawn. He was dragging an old lawn mower behind him and everything. I couldn’t believe it. So I asked him if he’s actually making any money doing that. He said yes. He’s being doing this all week and had cut something like twenty yards.
It was so quant I just had to go with it. He wanted fifty bucks for my front yard.

“Hold on. How much gas will you use up cutting this yard, do you think?”
“I dunno. A can I guess.”
“And how much does a can of gas run you?”
“I dunno. Ten bucks.”
“So you’re asking forty bucks to cut this yard?”
“Huh? No, fifty.”
“No, I mean you’re wanting forty bucks profit for cutting this yard.”
“Oh, I dunno if I can do it for forty.”
“No. I mean…wait, you know what “profit’ means, right? I pay you fifty, you spend ten of it on the gasoline and you clear forty bucks…profit. See?”
“Yeah but I gotta pay for the gas.”
“Well…right. That’s what I just said. So out of that fifty you really only clear forty of it. So you’re making forty bucks in profit.”
“Huh?”
“What I’m trying to get at is whether this yard is worth forty bucks clear profit. It really isn’t that big, I don’t think. My back yard, now that’s a different story.”
“Well, I’m just…you know…I’m charging fifty bucks…you know, to cut yards.”
“You mean you aren’t haggling or anything? Just charging everyone fifty bucks each?”
“Uh huh.”
“And a lot of folks have passed, I take it?”
“Huh?”
“Most people say, ‘No, thanks.’ Right?”
“Uh huh.”
“Well, I bet if you went down on your price a little for the smaller yards…like that one over there…did they turn you down?”
“Yeah, said she couldn’t afford it.”
“I bet she would have paid you twenty-five or thirty. It’s a teeny yard. You could have knocked that one out in fifteen minutes. That’s like getting paid a hundred bucks an hour, you shouldn’t have passed that up insisting on fifty.”
“A hundred bucks?”
“Well, no. Because it would have only taken maybe fifteen minutes. But you get the point, right?”
“Huh?”
“…Never mind. I’ll pay you forty to this yard. But I can’t pay any more than that.”
“Oh, I dunno. I’m charging fifty.”
“Okay, no thanks. Have a nice day.”

I don’t mean unintelligent when I say “stupid“. I mean stupid. They don’t know how to think.
Seriously. Is there something in the water maybe? Were people always this stupid and I just didn’t notice? Is there some aspect of approaching middle age that causes you to recognize the stupid more readily?

Or maybe I’m just getting more intolerant of stupid as I age? Is that normal?

Oh, God. What am I going to be like when I actually get middle-aged?

You know, it’s not like I claim to be a rocket scientist or anything. I know full well I’m not the brightest star in the sky here. In fact, I find I expect people to be generally as smart or smarter than me. I just know in my bones that’s how it should be. I mean, I didn’t finish high school and my grades were crap when I did go. What little I do know today I learned for the most part on my own. So I kinda expect all these people who’ve actually been formally educated to know more than me. I should be learning things just from interacting casually with them.
And yet I can’t help but notice when there are five or six blatantly misspelled words per paragraph on government websites…such as the Department of Education’s website for my state…or that they misspelled both “employment” and “opportunity” on the billboard at the, for crying out loud, unemployment office here in town. Or that the menus at both my favorite restaurants in town have misspelled the name of dishes they serve…on menus that were obvious printed at, dare I point out, a printing shop somewhere. I’m sorry but…you can’t spell “crab delight”? You serve it. And whoever printed these very nice menus of yours, these folks who make a living printing words…didn’t catch that? Not even Hunan Beef? Because I’m pretty sure you’re not serving Human Beef today.
I asked the waitress once how much those fancy menus had cost to print up. I can’t say how much she estimated but I remember she went on and on about it. It was fairly expensive as I recall. So I pointed out the typos and misspellings. She argued that “delite” was spelled correctly, at first. I’m still not sure I convinced her it wasn’t.

And I know this all sounds crotchety. Like I’m just looking for something to bitch about. But that’s really not it. Honestly.
It’s scary, a little. Because these people vote. And they sit on juries. These folks make big decisions.

And they’re stupid.