Idiots...

Idiots. That's a fun word, isn't it? Until you actually run across one and you have my personality. Nothing irritates me more than stupidity. I'm starting to think that I'm an Idiot Magnet, if there ever was such a thing. I have so many idiot stories to tell that I honestly have been asked by others to write a book on the subject. If there's an idiot out there, I probably know them. I'll share one of my honest-to-goodness, no lying, idiot stories with you... I call this one, Have you pushed a tiller lately?

So, I know a couple, I'm embarrassed to say, that asked a friend of mine to borrow her tiller to till the soil in their front yard. My friend gladly obliged. My friend and this couple live a mile to the mark from each other in a small rural town.

It was August. The day was hot and humid. The couple came, driving their empty-bed pickup, to borrow the much-needed, little machine. I happen to be there at this particular moment in time. The husband started the tiller, making sure he could operate it properly. Seems like a reasonable thing to do. Made him seem smart, too - prepared and forecasting any issues that might arise.

Well, all was good until he took the little machine to the back of his pickup where his wife met him. Now, you ready for this? The husband leaves the tiller on the ground behind the truck and started it again for his wife who takes the handles.

The husband gets in the truck, starts the engine and proceeds to slowly drive away. The wife, starts to walk behind the truck, following it. Off they go on their mile-long walk/drive home. My friend and I looked at each other with questionable faces, wondering why the couple didn't put the machine in the bed of the truck!

When the couple returned later than afternoon, I asked the wife how long it took her to get the tiller home. She said that it took them about 1/2-hour to 45 minutes. Then I asked this question, "Why didn't you put the tiller in the back of the truck so that you didn't have to walk behind the truck the whole way home? You would have been home in less than five minutes" Are you ready for her answer? She says to me, "Ah hell, I didn't think about that!" And evidently, her husband didn't either. So, I ask you - Are two heads better than one? Not in this case.

I don't know about you, but if my husband even suggested that I do that, I'd hit him first and then go see a divorce attorney. And even if I was mentally challenged, I think that after walking a few steps in the August heat and humidity, staring at the empty pickup in front of me in the 1/2-hour it took them to get home, it would have dawned on me that I could put the tiller in the back of the truck and ride with my husband!

It's common now between my friend and me, if either of us does something stupid, to ask each other, "Have you pushed a tiller lately?" It's our way of reassuring each other that as stupid as we are in the careless mistakes we sometimes all make, that we are not so stupid that we would push a tiller one mile behind an empty pickup in the blazing summer sun without stopping to think somewhere along the way that there's a better solution to what I was doing!

I ask you - Have you pushed a tiller lately?

ts