Teenagers Behaving Badly Part 12- I See Dumb People

                         
I’ve been trying to work out how I would categorise my blog for when Oprah Winfrey comes knocking on my door asking me to come and talk about my life on her television show. She still has a show doesn’t she? If not I’ve been wasting my bloody time following her on Twitter…

Is Pinky Poinker an ‘Informative’ blog covering history or current events or even how to cook cupcakes or make slippers from duct tape? I can easily vouch for the fact that there is nothing anyone could possibly learn from any of my posts, except perhaps that the contraceptive pill was invented for a very sound and prudent reason. 

                                 

Could it be a ‘Creative Rant’ type of blog releasing my frustrations with the world in an amusing and entertaining manner? Not really… I have a Teachers' Registration Board, a bowdlerising father and a suppression order from my kids which all serve the purpose of gagging me from saying what I really want to say.

No. I feel that Pinky Poinker’s blog is more of a ‘Cultural Introspectives’ genre.

“Oh come on, Pinky!” I can hear you moaning into your Sauvignon Blanc. “Get off your high horse and stop being a wanker.”

But before you stop reading, think about it... Along with all my incessant whinging about my five teenage kids, I usually compliment their outrageous crimes with an equally appalling tale from my own nefarious youth. 

I write this way in the hope of inspiring improved global relations between other parents and their pimply offspring.

Perhaps the ugly confessions from my own despicable and shady past are merely an altruistic action aimed at posing the confronting concept that we were just as bad as they are? Still not buying it?

My friends… I was- sadly- just as wicked as my own children have turned out to be but, and it’s a big but, I wasn’t as dumb.

I knew how to cover my tracks whereas Abbott, Costello and the Three Stooges leave such blatant clues I feel like I’m on the set of Scooby Doo. 

                                 

I seem to always catch them in the act which makes me wonder if I’m only aware of what’s floating on the surface. Are they really dumb or just pretending and merely throwing red herrings in my self-congatulatory face? 

Am I the dumb one?

Carlo Maria Cipolla, a famous historian, is renowned for his essays about human dumbness. The following are Cipolla's five fundamental laws of dumbness:

1. Always and inevitably each of us underestimates the number of dumb individuals in circulation. (So it would be possible for a mother to give birth to five dumb people in one family… I’ve often wondered.)

2. The probability that a given person is dumb is independent of any other characteristic possessed by that person. (So even if they played State Representative basketball, achieved an OP 4, or won a State Award in Playwriting they could still be dumb people.)

3. A person is dumb if they cause damage to another person or group of people without experiencing personal gain, or even worse causing damage to themselves in the process. 

(Hmmm…. I’m thinking about two written off cars right now.)



4. Non-dumb people always underestimate the harmful potential of dumb people; they constantly forget that dealing with or associating with dumb individuals invariably constitutes a costly error. 

(You can say that again. If I had a dollar for every replaced item that was carelessly lost or destroyed by my suspected 'dumb people' over the last twenty years I’d be chartering a yacht and docking at St. Tropez instead of scanning my shopper dockets every week.)

5. A dumb person is the most dangerous type of person there is. 

(What the hell does that mean? Come to think of it, Jonah once left a soft drink can in the freezer which exploded when I opened the door missing my head by a centimetre.)

Now I get it! My dumb people are trying to kill me!