I have met an inordinate amount of asses in my life. I’ve met dumb-asses who can’t hold down a job, I’ve met dumb-asses who think they are smartasses but are really jackasses. I’ve met assholes who run red lights as a matter of habit and think they are great drivers (the other drivers are either too slow or have no where important to go like the assholes).
In Vegas in particular, I’ve met a ton of conservative dumb-asses. You would think Sin City would be full of decadent liberals, but no. It’s a conservative town.
Just the other day, I got accosted by one dumb-ass who told me I needed counseling because “I hated children.”
“I don’t hate children. I just don’t want them near me.”
“How could you possibly feel that way? There’s so much to learn from them.”
I tried to explain to this dumb-ass, as I have many times over the years to other people, that children are noisy, they smell dirty, and if you spend two minutes talking to them, contrary to popular belief, you will not be amazed at the delightful things they say, but instead, you will be bored our of your eye sockets.
Anyone who has ever had to sit next to a squirming, kicking toddler on a flight from San Francisco to New York knows what I’m talking about. When the plane lands, instead of heading to baggage claim, you run to the bar to calm your frayed nerves.
The dumb-ass told me that to not have children is selfish. Yes, this dumb-ass was a guy.
“Wait, I am selfish. I admit it. You want someone who cares more about moisturizer than other people to be a mother?”
“When you have children, you stop being selfish,” Mr. Dumb-ass gave me look that indicated deep Jesus-like pity.
Uh-huh.
“Let me explain something,” I said in my best clinical voice, as if I were talking to a mental patient. “If you know you will not be a good parent, if you have no interest in being a parent, if you think you might be the kind of parent who tells the kids to go into the middle of the street to play, why would you have kids?”
“Because to not have children is selfish.”
The thing about dumb-assess is that they don’t know they are stupid and worse, they believe with all their heart that they are right (case in point, W and everything he says).
This story has no great ending. I didn’t say anything to convince the dumb-ass that he was wrong. The more I talked, the worse I made it in his eyes. At one point he said, “Just the other day I was telling my wife that I work with a bunch of selfish liberals.” I took the high-road and refrained from saying, “why just the other days, I was telling my childless husband that I work with a bunch of dumb-ass conservatives.”
You can’t win with dumb-asses, you can only ignore them. We both agreed that we liked pets a lot and ended the conversation there. We haven’t spoken to each other since. I’m good with that.
As an aside, I’ve only ever had two people tell me that it was wrong of me to not want children. Both were men. Women, even those fertile Myrtles with a dozen kids and a bible hard-wired to their brain, have always told me I’ve made a smart decision, and that they wish more people who don’t want kids or who are unsure if they want them, would come to a similar conclusion. Their attitude? If you aren’t going to take the time to raise your kid right, it might grow up to be an ass. Who wants that? The world has enough asses already.
