Yes, I know I’ve been wrong with theories before (okay, so I was wrong about the healing powers of gibbon spit. Wipe your face and get over it) but this time I feel I’m on to something. My theory is that as the holiday season gets closer to its crescendo people get closer to freezer temperature IQ’s.
It’s as if turkey has some magical ingredient that covers otherwise rational people in a coating of Dumbasstic! (patent pending). I’m not even talking about the random gas machines that inflict a haze on my everyday. I’m talking people I’d have a conversation with and not once (not even behind their backs) have to fight the urge to solder their teeth together to stop them from babbling.
And here are my first two examples of this degradation into another Dumbasstic! holiday season.
A group of three or four people were chatting and it was a normal, adult conversation. Exchanging pleasantries and general chit-chat that I find so enlightening. As you know, by enlightening I mean nap inducing. Which is why I don’t mind it. Naps is good.
But then something went wrong. I can’t really put my finger on it. One second we’re talking about buying a loved one a long coveted gift and the next this group of fully employed and outwardly functional adults began discussing what superpower they’d love to have.
Next stop, Lithiumland. It’s double dose day!
I’m watching these people have, what would look like to anyone outside earshot, the kind of adult conversation you used to imagine adults having when you were a kid. But no.
And it leads me to wonder if that’s why we’re as screwed up as we are. Here we were as kids thinking our parents and their friends were solving the world’s problems but, in reality, they were moments from a fist fight because your father and the next door neighbor both wanted to be Big Dick Man!
I’m watching these people get into this conversation and, as was inevitable, someone asked me what superpower I’d like. I begged off saying I hadn’t given it much thought since I was six and wouldn’t want to rush into it.
I mean, what if I said I wanted to be Shit Diamonds Man without thinking it through? Sure, it sounds like a good superpower but I’m pretty sure it would sting like a bitch.
But they keep pushing. As a matter of fact, they begin to come up with superpowers for me. I smile and keep trying to sway this gelatinous mass into different, and hopefully more distant, directions. But they’re on a mission and you know how it is with superheroes. They keep battling until justice is done, wrongs righted, my wits at it’s last fraying end.
“Yeah, I think I know what superpower I’d like.” I look at this collection of smiling dimbles (yeah, I had to make up my own word. I just couldn’t think of one that captured the spirit of the thing) and say, “It would be to make you people stop talking to me.”
Hey! Whodathunk it! Turns out I already have that superpower!
My next example of the petrifaction in the mental state of humans during the jungle, jangle of the holiday season (scholarly ring there, don’t ya think?) has to do with this fully bundled woman. She’s got so much fur showing I thought I was watching a 70’s era porno.
As she’s unbundling herself on this first cold snap of what will be (if history is any indication) eighteen straight months of unbridled cold, she rubs each appendage she unearths. It’s as if her superpower would be Arms of Wood Lady just to warm herself up. After a few moments her vocal chords thaw and she begins to speak.
“Boy, it’s scary cold out there.”
Scary cold? I don’t know about you but I’ve never walked outside and screamed because Jack Frost was nipping at my nose with a hedge trimmer. If that did happen, okay, that would be scary. I’d even give you if it was freezing on the 4th of July. Yeah, that could be a little scary because something sure is going wrong cosmically.
But because it’s cold. In November. In New England. And the news was filled with ‘Hey, bundle up it’s gonna be a cold one!’ reports I don’t think I can give you scary.
If the cold frightened you after all the previous information maybe you should go home, grab a steaming hot cup of cocoa and throw it in your face. I’m sure the cold will scare you less after that psychotic episode.
“Scary cold?” I question the woman as she unsheathes her fingers. “That’s not scary cold. Scary cold is when water from a public toilet splashes up your ass.”
By her reaction I could see that my superpower was still fully functioning.