Out of Bounds

BY MELISSA BURNSED

I SEE DUMB PEOPLE!!! I know, I know the bible says "Judge not lest ye be judged" and my grandmother used to say people aren’t always what they seem. But there are times when you can’t help but come to immediate conclusions about the intelligence level of some of your fellow human beings. That’s the case when you see people who otherwise might look perfectly normal, except for when they are seen and heard doing asinine things.

I can’t seem to avoid them. I see dumb people everyday and everywhere. It happens while driving down the road, in the grocery store, at sporting events, at government meetings and occasionally even at church.

Now don’t take this the wrong way. We’re not talking folks caught in unfortunate and usually embarrassing moments, like dumping food down your shirt in social settings or busting your behind when you slip and fall in a puddle of mud. Those instances are just a little funny and tend to be accompanied by a innate sense of relief that those embarrassing moments happened to somebody other than you.

The dumb people I see are instead those individuals who go about blithely unaware of just how stupid their actions make them look.

I’m talking about mothers and fathers who get behind the wheel and head down the road with their precious children sitting in their laps, instead of in safety seats. DUMB!!

Women who go into stores and leave their handbags sitting open in the top of shopping carts while they go look at something two aisles over. DUMB!!

Dog owners who allow their beloved pets to ride on top of tool boxes while they drive around town or worse on the interstate. DUMB!!

People who drop their trash on the ground, when there is a garbage can ten feet away. DUMB!!

Men who leave their spit cups sitting around after they have a dip of snuff. DUMB and GROSS!!

High school students who cut classes and then go drive up and down the main drag or hang out for lunch in a local restaurant, in plain sight of every adult who knows their parents. DUMB!!

Parents and coaches who get so caught up in wanting to see their preadolescent children win that they get into fights, both verbal and physical, over the rules and volunteer umpires calls at youth ballgames. DUMB!!

Politicians and government bureaucrats who have whispered, supposed secret conversations about everything from unauthorized cell phone bills, to lunches and bribes from developers lobbyists and who is having an affair with whose secretary while sitting or standing in rooms where there are active electronic devices to record the minutes of their meetings. DUMB!!

Small town church congregation members who sit in tightly packed pews on Sunday mornings and trash talk about this one or that one’s outfit or someone’s behavior that they witnessed at the bar the night before, while that person's relative is sitting in the row right behind them. DUMB!!

I really do try hard not to make assumptions about other folks and their actions, but sometimes there is just no getting around the obvious. You have to wonder if they don’t know any better or are these people really that DUMB?

I’m not claiming to be perfect by any means. As my mother-in-law loves to tell me repeatedly I have had my own personal share of dumb moments, especially when I was younger. Unfortunately she likes to bring them up at every family gathering, like the time… Oh my, I was about to do something dumb. Thank goodness I have run out of space!

Melissa Burnsed is a noted sports and news reporter who has branched out into, as she likes to say, "her rants."  She lives with her husband just over the state line in the Georgia Bend. Hence the name of her column, Out of Bounds