Chapter 1 – Introduction Section 1 – My Stupid List We’ve all done really stupid things haven’t we? Maybe you threw something knowing you would regret the shatter or crash that soon followed. Some of you have said what you were thinking out loud and paid the price for it. Over the years, students I’ve known have told me great stories of their dumbness. You know what I mean – it starts out as an idea that sounds fun and turns into a disaster! True, some things are more dangerous than others, but stupid pretty much covers it all. Think about your own life and the lives of your friends and you can probably come up with a few stories. Let me give you a few of my favorite examples. One kid I know rolled off of the roof of his house, on purpose! I have no idea what the thought process was leading up to that one. Another one stuck his tongue to a frozen metal pole. That’s not even original, it’s copycat stupidity! Unfortunately, I can identify with these guys, because I have my own list of stupid things I’ve done. When I was little I played on top of a snow pile that was next to a creek, in the middle of a cold winter. Yeah, I fell in and it was beyond bone chilling! When the weather got better I decided to crawl around the lawn pretending to be a dog. The dog had also been walking around the lawn that day pretending to be… well, himself. He had to poop and I wasn’t paying attention. I’ll never forget the feeling of that terrible stuff squishing up through my fingers. I wish it stopped there. By the time I got to high school I knew to avoid stupidity. Yeah, right. Aren’t the Bunsen burners in chemistry class just asking to be messed with? I wanted to do my own experiment and instead of making a scientific breakthrough, I discovered at least one brand of breath spray that’s flammable. The sound of the flame igniting the breath spray was a little louder and more impressive than I had imagined. Then came high school soccer. No, that’s not the stupid thing I did! I played defense and my soccer skills weren’t that great. One game, after much nagging, the coach put me up front. After a few minutes on offense a scoring situation presented itself. I remember it so clearly. We were moving toward the goal, I was on the left. I didn’t have the ball… yet. As the center forward approached the goal, the goalie came out to challenge him. I got that uneasy nervous feeling in my stomach as the center forward looked at me. If he passed it I’d have to take the shot—with my left foot because of the sharp angle…and because I wasn’t good enough to kick it with my right foot. Of course he passed it to me. I could see the shot ahead, wide open and waiting, the goalie a mile away. My left leg went back and I kicked the ball. It was so sad. The ball didn’t even miss with power. It rolled weakly past the left goal post. I wanted to dig a hole in the field and crawl into it. I got a new nickname I’m tempted not even to share… but will: Batman. So what’s stupid about this situation? I don’t know, maybe I should have passed the ball back, or tried with my right foot, or something. All I know is I felt stupid because I blew such a great opportunity. I wish I could tell you that I grew up, graduated college, and stopped doing stupid things. But I decided to spend my life working with junior and senior high school students. Stupid, huh? Relax, I’m just kidding. I went to work at a church in Pennsylvania, one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. The lead pastor decided I should have some “big church” responsibilities on Sunday mornings to get me up in front of the people. During the service there’s a spot between the first set of songs and announcements. I got the job of going up, praying, then inviting the congregation to greet one another. Simple, right? How many ways can you say “greet one another?” I was getting pretty bored with it so I decided to be creative – bad idea. I meant to say, “please make the person next to you feel welcome.” What I meant to say doesn’t matter because what actually came out was, “please feel the person next to you.” The people were so used to the routine that they didn’t even notice. Whew – close call! Except for one woman in the front, who smiled at me and said, “Nice…nice.” Amazing but true, they let me stay on at the same church, and after a few years I took a bunch of students to Mexico to work with a Bible Institute. Everyone knows it’s not safe to drink the water in Mexico, but we had no problems. Since things went so well, we went back the next year. This time I knew which restaurants were safe. Come on, I was a pro—I knew what to do and where to go. As I sat in a restaurant one evening across from a student who was chewing down a pepper that would melt marble I arrogantly drank an entire glass of “filtered” water. Both of us were sorry for what we did. He was sorry a few seconds afterward. I was sorry the next day. Very sorry. Ever seen the movie Dumb and Dumber? Yeah, that was me. I will end this list of stupid actions with, perhaps, the largest jewel in my crown of stupidity. I’ll just come out and hit you with it straight. I shot my wife. Yes, you read that right. I shot my wife, Shelly, with a real gun. Allow me to explain. We were at her childhood home in Michigan, with her parents. Yes, it happened in front of her parents. Her dad had just purchased a small pellet gun that would fire a variety of different objects, including small bullets. We decided to shoot metal pellets. It was a beautiful day out on their patio, in-ground pool glimmering in the sunlight. We stood under a small awning and fired over the pool at targets in the yard, while my daughter, Cierra, toddled close by. Being the lazy bum that I am, I thought we should fill our target bottles with water so they wouldn’t fall over. That way we wouldn’t have to go and keep picking them up after we shot them. Brilliant, right? Metal pellets. Plastic bottles full of water. Hmm. Shelly was sitting right behind me as I fired. I heard her shout and saw her grab her leg. The skin was slightly broken and there was a nasty mark. It turned into a nice ugly bruise the next day. The pellet had bounced off of the bottle, ricocheted back toward us, and hit her. Wow, that could have been really bad! Not that shooting her wasn’t bad, but it could have hit someone’s eye – or even hit Cierra. I did a seriously, totally stupid thing that day. This is the really short list of stupid things I’ve done. I didn’t get frost bite from the freezing creek. The dog poop washed right off my hands. I didn’t lose fingers or eyebrows from an exploding breath spray can. I didn’t get called Batman forever (and don’t you dare start now). Nobody did what I told them to during church that Sunday morning. My guts recovered from that fateful glass of water. And thankfully, my family survived the gun battle—and I haven’t fired any guns lately. Stupid things are kind of like that. Sometimes nothing happens and we get away with it – and sometimes the results are a disaster. Have you done anything stupid? Did you get away with it, or have to suffer the consequences? There’s that terrible feeling, you know, the time between the stupid act and knowing whether or not you get burned. Not comfortable. Even if you get through without a problem, it makes you think about what could have happened, and that’s not always a good feeling, either. The truth is, our lives are full of stupid decisions. Sometimes they’re big and stupid, sometimes small, but everyone makes them. Our hope is that most of our stupid actions are the small kind, and that we make less and less stupid decisions as we get older. Section 2 – What Is Stupid Anyway? What is stupid, anyway? And what can we do about it? stu-pid adj 1. thought to show a lack of intelligence, perception, or common sense 2. irritatingly silly or time-wasting 3. used to express anger, annoyance, or frustration (informal) 4. in a dazed state, for example, from shock, fatigue, or from the effects of drugs or alcohol (Encarta® World English Dictionary © 1999 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Developed for Microsoft by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc.) What are some other words for stupid? Unintelligent, dim, thick, dense, slow, dull, brainless, dim-witted… I think you get the point. No one wants to be stupid. I’ve done a lot of stupid things and met a lot of people who do stupid things but I can’t recall knowing anyone who worked hard to be stupid.