Did you ever do anything dumb?
I mean really dumb. Like when you forget to put on your thinking cap – if you even have one.
The other day, next-door-neighbor Marty told her husband, Richard, to go to the store to get some toilet paper. He returned an hour later with a package of paper towels.
“These are paper towels, not toilet paper!” said Marty, scolding him. “Ach! How dumb are you?”
He got bucky and said, “Oh, so you know everything!”
Next day, last Saturday, an arctic-cold day, Marty popped over.
She happened to mention the paper-towel mix-up.
“Marty,” I said, “whatever you do, never send Richard to the store to get a pound of bacon. He’ll come home with a dozen eggs.”
We burst out laughing. But – whoops! – we shouldn’t have laughed because little did we know it was our turn to be dumb, dumber than Richard.
Within the hour she and I had both lost our thinking caps, if not our minds. Since it was such a cold stuck-at-home day, I decided to make noodles with my excellent Atlas pasta-making machine. Marty agreed to help. So, as the dogs and cats watched hungry-eyed, we got to work. However, Marty and I were soon bumping into each other like two stooges because we were trying to change places. We were disoriented because we thought we must be standing on the wrong sides of the pasta machine. I was cranking, she was trying to catch the cranked-out noodles, but we were uncoordinated and awkward because either I clamped the machine backward on the edge of the table or we were just standing in the wrong places. The pets looked puzzled – even concerned – as Marty and I kept bumping into each other, but we finally figured it out. It wasn’t a butt-backwards pasta machine; it was us.
Once our thinking caps were back snug on our noodle heads, all was well as the long fettucine noodles, smooth as baby skin, emerged silently while I cranked the machine and Marty gathered them in her hands to lay on the clean white dish towels.
As the noodles were drying, Marty decided to call Richard to tell him the Fettucine Alfredo dinner would be ready in an hour and would he please go buy some Texas toast to have with it?
I was hoping he wouldn’t come back with Minnesota lefse.
At my kitchen telephone, Marty suddenly seemed discombobulated. She kept dialing the phone, then it would ring and she’d answer it. Nobody there. She’d dial again.
“Richard must be trying to call here,” she said.
She waited, dialed again, phone rang.
“Hello? Hello?”
Another busy signal.
She tried again, then glanced at the caller I.D.
“Dennis Dalman?!” she said, pointing, as if struck dumb by lightning. “It – it – it says Dennis Dalman on there. That’s you!”
“What?!” I said. “That can’t be! I didn’t call me. Why would I call me?”
“Well, that’s what I’d like to know,” she said. “But you didn’t call because you weren’t even near the phone.”
Mmmm . . . We were stumped, until Marty figured she’d been dialing my number, not her home number. Duh!
“Oh, I feel so dumb!” she sputtered.
“Yes,” I said. “Today you’re even dumber than Richard was yesterday.”
“Well, look who’s talking,” she scoffed.
A bit later, in popped Richard holding a plastic store bag. I was relieved when, sure enough, like a marvelous magician, he pulled out of the bag a box of Texas toast.
At that moment, we felt compelled (fair is fair) to fess up about our noodly confusion and attempted phone calls.
“Talk about dumb!,” Richard crowed, with a cocky grin.
Yes, I admit we were dumb, but it wasn’t as dumb as the time I poured bleach into a load of colored clothing. My thinking cap must have been in the wash that day. I’ve been wearing psychedelic hippy underwear ever since – groovy tie-dyed undies. I do, however, have a nice white pair left that I keep for special occasions, like visits to the doctor.
Hey, quit your snickering. Didn’t you ever do anything dumb? Really dumb? C’mon, dummies, put on those thinking caps and stop and think. Then email me so I can share it with readers. I dare you, double-dare you.
