Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Other People's Stupidity Can Be The Bridge Of Understanding Between Cultures

I used to work with a tech named Brenda who was dumb. Just dumb as a goddamn rock. She had a good heart and really did try, but many a time her lack of brainpower made me want to beat my head against the wall until there was nothing but a bloody pulp above my shoulders. She really liked turtles, and I once tried to get her a job at the zoo to get her out of my face forever. Then I felt bad because a turtle never has really done anything bad to me. (Brenda's not her real name, I have a policy of not dragging people into the blog unless they deserve it, like Lloyd DuPlantis Jr. of Gray, Louisiana, a pharmacist who says that birth control pills are "the most dangerous chemical on the market" because he would rather tell an outrageous lie than to admit he hates women.)

The other pharmacist I worked with at the time was from Vietnam. He came over sometime in the 80's after having grown up there. One day we were talking and he tells me that it's conventional wisdom in Vietnam that the average American GI who was there during the war was.... hmmmm.....I think the phrase translated to something like "not exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer", and that many people there have trouble understanding how the US became the only superpower when the only Americans they've ever seen seemed barely capable of walking upright.

"Well we didn't send a representative sample of people over there" I say. "The only people who went either wanted to go or were too thick to get themselves into college at the time."

The pharmacist had no idea what I was talking about, so I explained the concept of the student deferment. That anyone in college back then was exempt from the draft while they were a full time student, thereby creating a loophole most people, but not everyone, would be qualified to take advantage of.

The pharmacist thinks this over for awhile, then says "but that would mean of the people we have working here, only Brenda would get drafted"

"Now do you understand?"

"Ooooooohhhhhhhhhhhh......"

Brenda was probably somewhere at that moment trying to figure out why a customer had given her 12 dollars and 38 cents when the total purchase was only $7.38, completely unaware of her small contribution to bringing two very different worlds a bit closer together.

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