Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

The Dumb/Smart Switch

The Dumb-Smart Switch,

Everybody has a “Dumb-Smart” stitch. I’m convinced of it…. No, not everybody… Some people have a “Dumb-Dumb” switch but nobody has a “Smart-Smart” switch. I know this because my wife explained it to me and if every there was somebody who should know it’s her.

Linda is one of those people who got straight A’s in school and never cracked a book…My daughters are just like her except for a warped sense of humor that the got from me. They know they’re anal but have learned to laugh about it. My grandson’s definitely have the warped humor gene… don’t know yet about the anal part.

Now I know most of you are thinking that I’m rambling on as usual about matters I don’t have a clue about but that’s only because your switch is in the wrong position. Perhaps I need to explain. Every now and then I awaken a tree. “Awaken a tree you say…what kind of nonsense it that? Nobody can awaken a tree.”

Radagast could, and I have it on good account from JRR Tolkien that he went about talking to them and many he awoke from their slumbers. I think “Many” is an overstatement…. A few might be a more accurate. Treebeard, he definitely woke up. Then the male and female trees had some kind of falling out and the females packed up and left… and ever since the males have been wondering where they went off to…. So you see the trees aren’t sleeping they are pondering and have their switch in a mode that only makes it appear they’re standing about like bumps on a log.

Linda says that there are nurses that turn on the smart switch when they come to work and turn it off when they go home. These nurse colleagues of hers are brilliant on the job and only become totally retarded after returning home to their families. My wife has a litany of examples to prove her thesis and I won’t waste my time recounting them because I’m sure everyone has seen their own evidence. It begs the question why supposedly smart people wind up doing the dumb things that they do. Why smart people can excel on the job and be utter failures as role models, for their churches, communities families and children.

It’s one thing if the switch is shorted out or connects to two ends of a dead wire, but when half the circuit is alive and the other half is brain dead why do people choose to live in Nambe Pamby land? Why can’t they apply the same successful principles and experiences learned on the job to the rest of their lives? I wish I could say that only women have the “Dumb-Smart” switch but it seems to be the norm in both sexes. I can even bring to mind several personal examples.

I mean, it’s all so clear looking from the outside in… Why is it so murky and obscure looking from the inside out? Then, and this is the sad part… once we define the problem and see the solution, that’s no guarantee we’ll do anything about it. Humanity is fraught with ambivalence, ambiguity and a misdirected sense of values. It’s a wonder we ever climbed down out of the trees. Perhaps we fell down….on our heads.