One of my favorite stories my father tells is of the time he first met his future father-in-law — my grandfather.
This took place in my mother’s childhood home in Queens, New York. The home was under the flightpath of LaGuardia Airport, and whenever my father heard a plane overhead, he would duck instinctively.
My grandparents and mother stared at him like he was from Mars each time this happened. Years of roaring jet engines overhead had numbed them to the sound of low flying planes.
Once my father adjusted to the engine noise, the conversation began in earnest. My grandfather — a longtime New York City Public School math teacher — asked my father what he planned on doing for a living.
My father, who was finishing up college at the time, said he hoped to work in advertising.
“That sounds alright,” said my grandfather. “But you should really think about teaching instead.”
He then listed off the benefits of the profession — steady pay, long summer vacations, union protection, and so on.
Eventually, the conversation moved to a new subject. But the exchange left an impression on my father. He would later say this was the first time he experienced my grandfather’s ethos:
You can do what you want and be stupid. Or you do it my way.
Even though this story happened before my time, I enjoy hearing it each time it’s told. I enjoyed telling it again just now.
It’s hard not to chuckle at the thought of my father ducking every few minutes as an airplane flew overhead. Or to smile when imagining my grandfather effectively saying Don’t be stupid… in a thick New York accent.
Sure, my grandfather didn’t say those exact words. But the message was very New York — blunt, edgy and filled with tough love.
Yet, the story also gives me pause — for several reasons.
For one thing, my father did eventually become a teacher. After working in advertising for 8 years, he grew to loathe the profession. So, he got a Master’s Degree and rebooted his career as an elementary school teacher. Fast forward 25 years, and he’s still teaching — although he’s “graduated” to middle school now. My grandfather’s words proved prophetic.
But more than anything, it’s the moral of the story that gets me. That heavy-handed message of Do the smart thing. Don’t be stupid.
It’s a message that fits symbiotically with its source.
My grandfather was a great man. But he was also a stubborn man who could be overly simplistic. His perspective on life was shaped by his experience living through the Great Depression, a world war and two heart attacks. However, that perspective often led to a My way or the highway approach to differing viewpoints.
It’s a bit cavalier to classify people in this way. And calling people who take a differing viewpoint stupid is downright reckless.
Yet, my grandfather was a man of principle. He was a man who stopped watching baseball for 40 years after his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers betrayed him by moving to Los Angeles. He was a man who made his own repairs in his home, rather than paying a professional to fix the issues that sprang up.
He knew his way worked. He saw it. He lived it. He believed in it.
So, in his view, the other way must have been stupid.
My grandfather had a major influence on my life. I idolized him. I’ve written about him before, and I’m sure I will again.
Yet, in the years since my grandfather’s passing, I’ve come to recognize I’m more and more like him. I have a similar wit, a similar love of storytelling, a similar frugality when it comes to money. And I even have some similar mannerisms.
What I don’t have is a penchant for calling people stupid when they take actions I wouldn’t.
At least, that’s what I thought.
Not long ago, I was driving down the road in a suburb of Dallas. Traffic was relatively light, and I was making good time when a car slowly turned from a side street into my lane, just ahead of me.
I slowed down to adjust to the newfound obstacle in front of me. But to my dismay, the driver never sped up. I tried to pass the car, but a stream of cars, trucks and SUVs in the adjacent lane blocked my path.
So, there I was, suddenly going 10 miles under the speed limit in the left lane, stuck behind a snail. At the rate I was going, I would hit every stoplight on the way to my destination.
My commute had gone from a breeze to a chore. I was less than enthused.
But that wasn’t even the worst of it.
The car in front of me wasn’t just going slowly. Its driver seemed to be brake checking me intermittently. I found myself slamming on the brakes at random times to avoid a collision, even though there was no traffic in front of my new vehicular nemesis.
My displeasure turned to exasperation. Was this driver texting? Were they lost? And why couldn’t they pull off the road to sort themselves out?
Finally, the driver signaled to turn. But instead of gliding into the turn lane, the driver slowed down to a near stop, while still in the left lane.
I lost it.
Behind my fortress of sheet metal and glass, I screamed You are such an idiot. Why don’t you stop being stupid and learn how to drive!
That’s when it hit me.
I call people stupid when they do something I don’t agree with. Just like my grandfather once did.
To be clear, many of us would be agitated if we found ourselves in the situation I just described.
It’s hard not to be miffed when someone else blatantly disregards the flow of traffic and drives erratically in front of you.
Yet, the actions of the driver who caused this consternation were not illegal by any means. Inconsiderate, sure. But not illegal.
So why did I jump to such rash conclusions about the driver’s intelligence? Was I being as stubborn and simplistic with my perspective as my grandfather had once been?
Perhaps.
But I don’t want to take back what I blurted out behind the wheel of my SUV that day. Not one bit.
There’s an ongoing revolt against the word stupid.
It’s a small skirmish in the greater war for Political Correctness that’s overtaking our society. But for a singular battle, Operation Eradicating Intelligence Insults has raged for quite a while.
I believe it started with the release of Forrest Gump in 1994 — a movie that showed the world how those with low IQ can still live extraordinary lives. As the 90s progressed, expanding diagnoses of autism and a crackdown on bullying helped encourage a softer touch.
By the time Millennials came of age, those who didn’t meet standards were no longer stupid. They were special.
And with that shift, stupid became just another S-word. A way to swear at those we despise, but solely in the context of name-calling.
Disagree with a politician? Say they’re stupid. Frustrated that your favorite team’s quarterback threw a game-ending interception? Call him stupid.
The word is nothing more than a form of catharsis these days.
But not to me.
I wasn’t calling the driver of the car in front of me stupid just to blow off steam.
Yes, I was mad. But if I solely wanted an outlet, I had saltier language to choose from.
No, the words I chose were quite intentional.
Just like my grandfather years before, I had a definition for stupidity. And this driver’s actions fit the bill.
In my view, stupidity constitutes inconsiderate actions that put one at a disadvantage.
The driver’s lack of awareness of the flow of traffic and constant brake checking certainly put me at a disadvantage that day. The term fit.
In my grandfather’s view, a plumber or a handyman in his home put him at a financial disadvantage. Why pay their fees when he could MacGyver it himself with PVC pipe and some duct tape?
And why fully support his future son-in-law’s plan to enter the advertising world from the get-go? That field was ripe with uncertainty — uncertainty he knew would put my father at a disadvantage. Better for him to go with the sure bet of teaching.
So, yes. I guess I do empathize with my grandfather’s simplistic perspectives and brazen style. It might not be politically correct, but it isn’t entirely self-serving either.
I believe that to heal our fractured society, we must all get comfortable understanding the concept of stupidity — similar to the form in which I’ve defined it.
We must identify its sources, call it out and eradicate it.
This starts with identifying inconsiderate actions, and recognizing the disadvantages they cause downstream.
It continues when we spread the word that these behaviors are detrimental to our society, and are un welcome.
These actions, in tandem, will spur conscientious-yet-aloof offenders to change their ways. To stop acting stupidly and causing unneeded problems.
And when enough of them do, it will cause a sea change in how we interact with each other.
If this sounds ambitious, it’s because it is.
But even if the end result seems far off, starting the process is well within our grasp.
Contrary to the old adage, stupidity is a fixable problem.
It’s about time we get to work on that solution.