There are no stupid, old people.
Well, there might be a few, but they are only stupid AND old because they got lucky.
Old people are usually wise. That is the conventional line of thinking. I wanted to understand why they are wise.
It has been said that wisdom is knowledge applied, and old people may be wise because, over the years they have gained so much knowledge to apply. While this may be true, I think it is only part of the story.
I don’t think that I have ever used the phrase “stupid, old person.” I’m not sure that I have ever even heard it said.
I could imagine such a thing coming from a teenager. Everyone else is stupid to a teenager because teens know everything. I know that I did when I was one.
There is no shortage of stupid people around us. You, the reader, most likely know a number of stupid people. They can be found in your workplace, your neighborhood, your in-laws or even your own family. You, yourself, may even be a stupid person, but I doubt it.
Stupidity is, for the most part, spread equally over the globe. There is a great deal of debate about this, but I would say that stupidity is not sexist, and it afflicts both males and females with equal frequency.
People often think something that they don’t understand is stupid. Men don’t understand women and men can’t understand why women don’t understand men. I’ll leave this alone.
When it comes to age. though, the young among us seem to hold a monopoly on stupidity. I know that I am still very capable of doing stupid things, although I don’t think I do as many stupid things as I used to.
Older people have had more life experiences and therefore they have more reference material to go to when situations arise. They’ve been down that road before and they know where it leads.
My theory as to why there are so few stupid, old people is that many of the stupid people get themselves killed off before they have a chance to get old. The herd gets thinned by the sheer volume of stupid activities undertaken by younger people on a daily basis.
The old saying “live and learn” is true. Emphasis should be placed on the “live” part. The opposite of this saying is simply; “die.” You never hear anyone say “die and learn.”
Back when I knew everything, I think I was 16 or 17, my friend Pete was asking me if I knew of a place where we could see how fast his older brother’s 1974 Plymouth Roadrunner was.
The Roadrunner was canary yellow with a black stripe. It had mag wheels and wide tires. Pete’s brother had replaced the factory engine with a more powerful Chrysler 440. Pete knew that the Roadrunner would be fast; he wanted to know just how fast.
I told him that there was a long, straight stretch a few miles past my house on the road that I lived on. We could let her* unwind there.
Our “proving ground” was a flat, mile-long stretch of tree-lined rural road. Since we were young and invincible, we didn’t bother to put seat belts on. Pete put his foot to the floor and we were off. The 440 had us moving like a rocket in no time. This was my first time riding in a car at speeds in excess of 100 mph.
We were young and knew everything ... except for things like driving at 100-plus mph on a gravel road with wide tires is a great way to get yourself killed.
Needless to say, Pete lost control. The next thing I knew we were headed straight for the trees on the left side of the road ... and then the right ... and left again. We fishtailed like this for what seemed to be an eternity. At some point, I managed to locate and fasten my seat belt. How we stayed out of the trees, I will never know.
When Pete regained control of the car, we were still moving in excess of 90 mph, and we were nearly to the end of the road. There was an intersection ahead, and the road we were on ended there. Pete stood on the brake pedal and we braced for the crash.
The Roadrunner skidded past the stop sign and through the intersection. The trees on the other side were coming fast. Then, just like in the movies, the car came to a stop just short of the trees.
Divine intervention? Perhaps. All that I know is that the car shouldn’t have stopped, but it did.
Live ... and learn.
We lived and learned. The next time we tested a car’s top speed, we did it on paved road and I drove (this was still a stupid thing to do, by the way, just not AS stupid).
Some people never do learn, though. There is no danger of the planet running out of people who will do stupid things, over and over again. The Internet is rife with videos of young people engaged in a wide variety of very stupid activities.
It seems that stupid people are on a constant search for new and exciting ways to do themselves in.
I have come to the conclusion that old people are wise mostly due to the attrition rate of stupid people. I think that those who make it to old age were probably fairly wise all along. They learned from the mistakes that didn’t kill them and they didn’t make those mistakes again.
That’s why I say that any old people out there that are stupid, just got lucky.
Live and learn.
*colloquialism intended for my friends who will be annoyed by it.
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