I would rather have a bit of common sense than ten college degrees. I truly believe it gets you further in life, and if the examples I saw today are any indication, we are in a world of hurt.
I took three of my granddaughters to the beach in the morning and saw my first idiot of the day. A woman sat on the picnic table nearby and did nothing but yell at the younger of the the two children she had with her. I thought she was their grandmother and thought how terrible to have that kind of relationship with your grandchildren, when the older one came into shore to complain about a kid that had pushed her and she’d “almost drown-ded”. The woman told her to get over it and stop complaining. The girl, who was fully developed and certainly old enough to know better, made a face and screamed, “Shut up, stupid!” I am waiting for the woman to go postal, but she didn’t say a word. Then, to my amazement, the girl said, “Mother, give me my tube!” The woman stood up, waded into the water, and nicely handed it to her. A woman behind me mumbled, “That’s not what I’d have given her!” I turned to the woman behind me and responded, “I’d have given her a black eye!” I still can’t figure out what the boy did wrong to deserve the tongue-lashing he was getting while she let the older girl totally disrespect her. Getting older doesn’t give you common sense.
I have gotten very good at not leaving my fabric shopping bags in the car and I have a large zippered insulated bag that I put them all into, which makes it very easy to store beneath the grocery cart and it is the first thing I put on the counter when I check out. Now, to someone with common sense, that insulated bag would indicate to me that the customer would like their meat, dairy or frozen goods in that. Apparently, that is a stretch for most grocery packers. We are in the middle of a heat wave and it is unbearably hot out today, so I didn’t quite get why the packer packed all of my meat, dairy and frozen goods in the plain fabric bags and put my paper goods in the insulated bag. I wouldn’t think I would have to actually tell a grocery packer how to pack groceries, but I guess they don’t train them in the finer points of paper, plastic, fabric or insulated.
I stopped to get a pizza on my way home and watched a man in a prison guard uniform struggle to open the Coke cooler. It had three doors and he could not figure out how to open the middle one. He kept looking for handles on the doors and just did not seem to understand the idea of a sliding door. I stepped up to the counter to order my pizza-pepperoni with onion on half-and the clerk asked me “which half?” I wanted to run out of there before my common sense was sucked out of my brain because I could clearly see the place was full of idiots.
Give me common sense anyday.