how stupid can you get?

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At the courthouse the other day, there were two stiffly-starched, poker-faced state police officers standing sentinel just inside the entry. They stood next to scanning machinery and asked both my son and me to empty our pockets, remove our belts and put it all in a small white plastic basket that was then sent down a short conveyor belt and through a tunnel for X-ray. Visitors could retrieve their belongings perhaps ten feet away, after having passed themselves through a free-standing, metal-detecting, upside-down U-like doorway.

As I was rethreading my belt and putting keys, wallet, change and cell phone back in my pockets, I asked one of the cops what the strangest thing he and his partner had ever detected. Guns? Explosives? Knives? Other implements of mayhem? "Drugs," he said with a smile. "Prescriptions?" I asked, "or street drugs?" "Street drugs ... sometimes they forget they've got them."

My first reaction was, "how stupid can anyone get?!" Bringing what is illegal into an environment that is devoted to social legalities and moreover is likely to search you ... that's pretty stupid.

And although I still think it may take some sort of award in the pantheon of stupidity, I also wonder how many times I had fallen prey to similar stupidity ... being so lackadaisically convinced by my own existence and habits and opinions and beliefs and clothes and lifestyle that I was lulled and blinded to an environment that viewed things differently.

A friend of mine, Mark, once told me about his trip to India. He had seen the Taj Mahal and other high-profile tourist attractions without seeming to upset anyone. But, because he is left-handed, he excited a small furor of dismay when eating food that was consumed without knives and forks. In the places where he went, everyone ate their food with their right hands. Left hands were reserved for wiping one's ass.

This is how I live ... this is how and who I am ... this is my place of assumption and comfort. It is not something I think about. It's home. It's 'normal.' .... and of course I will forget a nickel-bag of heroin in my front pocket.

Little and large, where is the habit different? Power brokers cannot imagine how anyone would not see the world as a place in which to maneuver and manipulate. Christians cannot imagine Buddhists ... and Buddhists cannot imagine Christians. Peace-prone activists become used to despairing of war-mongers even as those predisposed violence and war chuckle disparagingly about the wimpy ranks of the peace-prone.  Homosexuals wonder at heterosexuality, perhaps, and vice versa. And how could anyone root for a team that was not the Red Sox?

Of course, it is never so cut-and-dried, so black-and-white ... but even with the shades of grey tossed in, even with the protestations of a well-considered broad-mindedness, still there can be a tendency to forget the nickel-bag of comfort and assumption. It's very, very human. "I yam who I yam," as the cartoon character Popeye used to say.

But who 'yam' I? Are my nickel bags of forgetfulness and assumption warranted in this wide wide world of sports we call life? For exactly how long am I willing to sidestep that question by tweaking my assumptions and reinforcing my perceptions with shades of grey? Pretty soon there are so many shades of grey that the comfort of "black" or the relief of "white" go begging. "Everything is shades of grey," the slick and the lazy intone. And it's comfortable and comforting ... another nickel bag to shove in the front pocket and forget about. Intellectual and emotional ... everything is shades of grey and I yam who I yam.
Ahhhh.

Intellectually and emotionally, this situation, assuming anyone is willing to investigate it, can really cook your grits... constantly shoring up one thing or redefining another ... looking for the formula that will salve all wounds and leave me in charge.

And that's what it comes down to, perhaps -- the desire to be in charge, in control, to be master and commander of my own fate. But if all life becomes an explanatory footnote -- something that will tweak earlier assumptions -- then it might reasonably be asked, what fact or set of facts do all these footnotes, all these shades of grey, refer to?

How stupid can you get? Well, if you're anything like me, the answer is, "Pretty damned stupid." Maybe it's time to turn out our pockets, consider our comforting assumptions, recognize the nickel-bags of forgetfulness and longing to be in control. It's so time-consuming and so palpably unsuccessful -- searching out the shades of grey. Isn't it time to give it a rest?

Maybe yes, maybe no. I don't know. But I do know that a nickel-bag can only offer its comforts on a limited, time-sensitive basis. Maybe a little more care, a little less control-freak, a little less wailing and whining about peace in this life ... maybe that would make better sense. Maybe a little more yam and a little less I would work better.

I don't know. I just think about it.
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