I WISH I COULD BE DUMB AGAIN
February 2, 2007
LOS ANGELES- There it is people…The last box. I’ve officially unpacked completely. I’m now a month into living in Los Angeles yet I still feel like I’m visiting. Doesn’t quite feel like home to me yet.
The first week I was in here I took my car to Enterprise Rent-A-Car at the airport and attempted to return it as if it were a rental.
I was LITERALLY , 10 feet from getting on the Shuttle when the lady ran over to tell me what I had done.
Even worse than that is the 3-4 times that I’ve picked up my home
phone to call the front desk for a wake up call on to discover that
I’m at my home. And just when I do start to feel comfortable here I
have to deal with my maintenance man.
I have what is called an ‘Inverted Thermostat’ which means that when I set it to ‘COOL’ hot air comes out and when I set it to ‘HEAT’ cool air comes out. I tried explaining this to my maintenance man but there’s only one problem…
HE DOESN’T SPEAK ENGLISH!!
Huh?
How the hell are you the MAINTENANCE MAN! But you can’t communicate with the tenants? I thought it was a practical joke at first but this man wasn’t kidding.
Finally, I mustered up some of my 9th grade Spanish and muttered…
“Amigo! mi frio es caliente y mi caliente es frio”
He replies…“tu frio es caliente?”
‘Si’ I replied and he scurries out of the room
About 10 minutes later Jim J McNoIngles returns with a friend who speaks less English than him. They stare at my thermostat and mumble Spanish to each other for an hour and then leave the house.
This process repeated itself for the next 3-4 days with my heat still not working. So on the 4th day when the two amigos returned I blast them with a 10 minutes of rage about how I’m going to withhold the rent check, and how It’s a shame that I don’t have heat and no one seems to care etc…
They stood there just looking at me with this blank ass stare
Then it dawned on me, they don’t understand a single word that I’m saying.
You know that blank stare that all foreigners give you when they don’t speak English.
I know that these are mugshots of random people but they have that "random" stare off into nothingness that I'm talking about.
It was at that moment that my rage turned to envy. All I could think to myself was, “I wish I was that dumb again.”
Dumb people have less responsibility and accountability for their actions. You can never be mad at them, because they’re just dumb.
But then I thought about it, what if they’re not dumb. What if they fake not speaking English to keep from dealing with bullshit everyday. These Mexicans are on to something. Whenever someone starts talking crazy, just give em the ‘look’ .
Sometimes I wish I could give people that blank “I can’t speak English” stare. Think about how much less bullshit you’d have to deal with everyday if you could fake not speaking English? The chit-chat in the elevator. The talkative lady in the grocery store line. Or this person…
“Talkative Airline in the seat next to you chick”
I’m assuming that all she was trying to do was make small talk, but the more she talked, the dumber and dumber she sounded.
This is a book by joyce meyer. It has 365 bible passage and nice inspirational stories for you to read.(* probably the best Christmas gift I got last month*) One for every day of the year. Sometimes I get caught up in the book and I read ahead by a few weeks. I pull it out and start to read and Jill J McNoBrain chimes in….
JILL J: What you reading?
ME: Book of Bible passages. There’s one for each day of the year.
JILL J: wouldn’t it be cheaper to just read the bible?
ME: probably, but I have trouble interpreting all that ancient bible rhetoric and a book like this is a much better read for me.
JILL J: But you’re still reading passages from March.
ME: Yeah. I’m a little ahead of myself but it’s a good read so I don’t mind.
JILL J: But won’t you run out of quotes before the end of the year?
ME: yeah
JILL J: Well then how are you going to get blessings?
This goes on for another 10 fifteen minutes before I finally break down and throw on a Dave Ramasay CD into my MP3 player in an attempt to ignore her. No avail.
JILL J: Who’s Dave Ramsay?
ME: He’s basically a dude that goes around the country holding seminars on how to save money and invest money and buy stocks, get out of debt etc
JILL J: how do you invest money?
ME: Well you could invest $3-4000 in the right company and down the road it’ll be worth half a million dollars or so.
JILL J: REALLY? !!! I NEED TO DO THAT. Which bank does this?
ME: all of them I guess.
JILL J: Well they didn’t mention that to me when I opened my account.
ME: you could but a house for $80,000 or so and then flip it for $120,000 or so.
JILL J: but if I bought it for $80,000 why would I sell it to someone for more than I bought it for? That’s dishonest.
I was waiting for her to laugh but this chick was serious gang. She spewed tidbits of ignorance throughout the flight. It was too late to even fake like I was an intimidating black guy because I had pulled out a book full of bible quotes.
Just once during that exchange I would’ve loved to have given her the stare...
Maybe then she would’ve left me alone.
These Mexicans are on to something because I’m pretty sure had I given this chick the “look’ then she wouldn’t have talked to me at all. The same goes for people on elevators, and people in grocery store lines.
Wood, Jr.