Level of Stupid
As a twelve year old boy, I used to tie my
fishing pole to my stingray—the bikes with the banana seat and chopper handle
bars. I’d ride the ten miles into the foothills and fish for trout in a little
creek that trickled down the mountainside. Most of the time, the nibbles were
crayfish, but I always came home with at least one trout. Years later, fishing
was forbidden because of mercury poisoning. Obviously, the mercury had always
been in the water due to the run off spilling through the quicksilver mines, but
science had progressed to the point of being able to measure minute amounts of
the toxin by my late teens.
The memory of fishing on those hot summer
days, sitting on a rock and watching the water rush by, came to me as I drove
home on a local freeway. The car in front, a white Toyota in the slow lane,
would periodically float off into the shoulder, and then swerve into the middle
lane before once again riding the right hand lane. After several miles of this,
I courageously pulled out to overtake this wandering commuter. I saw the driver
(a woman) talking on her cell phone while reading a magazine that was draped
over the steering wheel.
What’s the link between these two events?
Simple: with the right focus, technology was improved to enable measuring the
tiniest amount of mercury in water, so why can’t we develop a similar method for
the degree of Stupid in the air? Surely this fluctuates, no different than
smog. On some days, everyone I know takes a stupid pill, including me.
Wouldn’t this information be beneficial to the public? Like Spare the Air Days,
we could have Stupid Alerts warning the Bay Area. Imagine, we could be driving
home one night, past the sig-alert signs, and read, “Caution: The level of
Stupid is at a dangerous level. Call in sick tomorrow!” Now, that would
be a worthy cause for a tax increase.
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