Dumb as a box of rocks. A few fries short of a Happy Meal. Half a bubble off plumb. You can’t fix stupid.
When I hear some of the humorous and colloquial expressions we have for people prone to ill-considered actions, it evokes the memory of a story my dad liked to tell about his time in the Navy.
There was an officer on deck when an oil barrel broke loose and rolled down a cargo ramp. To avoid being hit by the barrel, the officer needed only to take a step to one side, but instead he ran in a straight line with the barrel close behind until he was able to jump into a cargo net while the barrel passed over him.
That officer couldn’t pull a hook out of a fish. He wasn’t playing with a full deck. He had one wheel in the ditch. We’ve seen his episode with the barrel in cartoons. It perfectly illustrates the opinion shared by the rank and file for leaders educated by institutions but not by life experience. Dad was keen on education but quick to remind us of the things you can’t learn in a book.
Dumber than a hog in a horse race. Couldn’t pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel. Sharp as a bowl of oatmeal. Yesterday we sat in traffic outside Dillard, Georgia, and took advantage of the opportunity to review some of our favorite expressions for people who are thicker than a jug of molasses.
We forget sometimes that we are not “in” the traffic. We are the traffic. But this traffic was largely unnecessary in spite of the ongoing construction with the widening of US 441. Including the turning lane, they had 4 lanes to work with, but the northbound traffic was confined to a single lane frequently interrupted by the ingress and egress of numerous earth movers.
What we witnessed was some kind of rolling bucket brigade of front-end loaders, backhoes, and dozer loaders. They were scooping dirt from a pile on the side of the road, crossing the line of traffic and rolling up the turning lane about a half mile to cross the traffic again and deposit the dirt at another location.
I’m not a project manager, but I do know that a single 10 cubic yard dump truck will hold at least 5-7 scoops from a dozer loader of the size we saw rolling back and forth. Maybe they were reenacting that scene from Cool Hand Luke: “That ditch is Boss Kean’s ditch. And I told him that dirt in it’s your dirt. What’s your dirt doin’ in his ditch?”
We are all subject to making dumb decisions when we are in a hurry or panicked or angry. Uninformed choices or decisions based on bad information can have the same results as stupid ones. Unfortunately, we live in an age of accelerated pace, widespread anger, and bad information. There is a potential idiot hiding behind every bush or staring back at us in the mirror. Be careful out there.
Outside The Box 