Comedian Ron White said it best when he named his last album: You Can’t Fix Stupid.

Now I have a few really major pet peeves – One is bad directions. You give me bad directions to driving somewhere and I’ll curse you up and down for days. Another is ineptness. When people are inept at what they do it drives me batty. I owned an ad agency for years and when employees showed signs of ineptness, I lost it. I basically have zero tolerance. And ineptness’s close cousin is STUPID. Now they’re different because those who are inept normally just don’t give a shit and always perform a half-ass effort. But stupid is either genetic, a product of the environment, or basically NEVER applying yourself anywhere at any time in your life. Somehow a person just doesn’t have the capacity to do any better.

Forest Gump was referred to throughout the movie as “stupid” and his patented reply was always “Stupid is, as stupid does.” Forest was born with a slow brain fer learnin’ and a way below average IQ. But that sure as hell didn’t make him a bad person. He did so much good it was amazing – especially taking care of his shrimp loving buddy Bubba’s mom after Bubba died in Vietnam. So I obviously don’t get mad at someone like a Gump – or someone born retarded or mentally impaired. And I don’t refer to those people as stupid – EVER. We all know they are some of the kindest and most loving people on earth.

I’m kind of looking at a mix of the other two reasons – product of environment and never applying one’s self or giving a Shinola. This is probably where ineptness rears its ugly mug. If you hang around with a bunch of ignoramuses, an ignoramus you are sure to be. If you never give a damn about much while growing up, well, hello future 40-year old, six-pack pounding slacker.

Think about some of the dumb-ass morons you hung around with as kids or teens. Life was a bit simpler then and you really didn’t care about a person’s spiritual beliefs, political persuasion, occupational status, or love for hand-rolled cigars. All you cared about were that he could throw a forward pass, he dug Marvel Comics, or could steal beer from his old man’s case of Bud in the basement. But as you got out of high school and looked to bettering yourself, furthering your education and becoming something, some of your friends took the minimum wage, laborer route and suddenly there wasn’t a lot in common anymore (even though he did upgrade to Heineken.) But at that age you’d still watch a football game on TV together or listen to some heavy metal and down a collection of cold ones. You knew your buddy Jack was pretty stupid, but you still had emotional ties as the two of you had done much together over the years. Btw, Jack is a real stupid friend I had who got into a little problem with white shiny powder and lost everything. He borrowed 50 bucks from me 23 years ago and promised for months that he’d “have it the end of this week – I swear!” With compounded interest, that scumbag owes me twenty-seven thousand, four hundred and fifty-six dollars. Jack had a half-witted brother, too. One time Mark rigged a spray painted sign made of an eight-foot piece of plywood on their front lawn that read, FREE KITTENS FOR SALE. Yeah, that’s a keeper. At my wedding 20 years ago, while I was making the rounds from table to table, Jack patted his pockets with both hands and said, I quote, “Musta fergot ma card, buddy!”

Of course then there’s Frankenstein stupid, you know, “bread, drink, uuurrrrrgh, etc” But the flat-headed schlep sure had the smoke part right, so you can’t be too hard on the old Bavarian monster.

Now even as an adult, we still admittedly hangout with a dumb-ass or two. Could be a softball teammate, a poker buddy, or some cretin that always bums a cigar off you. It’s funny because the friendship is limited and only works in that circumstance. The extent of the conversation will always be nothing more than the double play that cost us the inning or I can’t believe he pulled a flush on the river card. Rarely is this the guy you discuss the long-term ramifications of the mortgage crisis, or Wayne Dyer’s theories on becoming one with the universal consciousness. And you can’t possibly discuss the war in Iraq with out him using the words “towel heads, God, M16, and Budweiser” in the same sentence.

No you can’t fix stupid – and you don’t have to hang out with him, either. I know, he may not be a bad guy, but the rebel flag in the rear windshield of his ’79 Dodge Pick-Up and the moose-head flashlight he got for smoking 7,000 packs of Marlboros sure does get under your skin a bit.

I know that we “all” do stupid stuff and quite possibly others may think of US as the stupid-ass that they refuse to hang out. You ever think abut that? Or are you still too busy being all pissed off at that god damned double play?

Tuesday is Good,

Tommy Z.

JR Cigars Blog With the Zman