stupid people do stupid things — a list of mine, defended in court

the sentence is a circle holding its own tail. it is also dave’s favorite framing for a story that ends with him owing me money. yesterday i listened to one — ten things he insisted other people did, defended item by item, with footnotes from a man whose last tax return predates the pandemic. i wrote the rebuttal at 3:04pm while the q3 review on the third floor began without me.

i should explain. stupid people do stupid things is the kind of sentence dave deploys when he wants to avoid the part where he is, structurally, one of the people. so this morning, while carla took the elevator up and the meeting started without quorum, i decided to flip the chart and write the list myself. ten things i have done. defended where they need defending. labelled where they don’t.

stupid people do stupid things: a tautological sentence used to file actions and people in the same drawer without admitting it. it survives because of the rhythm, not the content. on inspection, the phrase labels the doer with the act, and the act with the doer, in a closed loop. it is a verbal ouroboros wearing a tie.

writing this on a tuesday. carla is upstairs. dave is on the phone in the parking lot. i can see his car from the window because he parks crooked, on principle.

before the list, the framing. i went deeper into the stupid pillar in another investigation, and the loop dave was using on the phone is the same loop i wrote about there. once you accept that stupid people do stupid things by definition, you stop asking which thing, and which day, and which kitchen.

1. stupid people do stupid things, the framing as a tautology

let’s actually look at the construction. stupid people do stupid things. the predicate uses the subject as the definition. you could swap any adjective in there and the sentence would feel as authoritative. tall people do tall things. tired people do tired things. the rhythm carries the weight. the grammar does the work that the meaning refuses to.

i ran this past dave on the phone earlier — he agreed, at first. then he said dave-shaped people do dave-shaped things and we are here, on this call, to discuss it. i told him that was a different framing. he laughed in the way he laughs when he is about to ask for a favor.

the phrase, like stupid is as stupid does, locates blame inside the person and not inside the day, the room, the hour, or the budget. it is a verdict that pretends to be a sentence. i have written about that permanence problem at this same desk on a different morning, because once you accept the loop, you accept the prison. and the prison was, in this morning’s case, a list of ten items dave was defending on someone else’s behalf, mostly so he wouldn’t have to defend his own.

which is fine. dave is allowed his framing. but if we are listing stupid acts, i want to list mine. in honesty. with explanations. so here is the list.

2. ten of mine, with explanations and the ikea

i went to the ikea last weekend with a measuring tape, a tote, and a plan. that should already tell you where this is going. ten items. each defended at length, where length is warranted. i will keep it tight, as carla will be back from the q3 review in roughly forty minutes and i don’t want her to read any of it.

1. i bought a fork. one fork. i live alone. sparky has been in service ever since. nobody who has accused me of stupidity here has, on follow-up, owned fewer than nine forks. nine forks for one mouth is the actual stupid thing.
2. i bought a third yoga mat in 2023. it lives, currently, under the couch, possibly evolving. i have not used it. i did not use the first two either. the third yoga mat is consistent with the previous two, which makes it not stupid but rigorous.
3. i killed a microwave with a fork. the seventh, by my count. the act was not stupid; the lighting was. and the manual that came with the microwave was three pages and one of them was a warranty.
4. i half-built an ikea bookshelf. the bookshelf, the BILLY-shaped one i am not naming, sits at a thirteen-degree lean against the wall. the missing dowel is somewhere under the sofa, near the third yoga mat. the bookshelf functions. it holds books. the angle is, in my view, decorative.
5. i bought the wrong-size allen key at the ikea exit. i bought it for a different ikea visit, years prior. i still have it. it has, on it, a small label saying “for the next one”. stockpiling allen keys is not stupid. it is preparation.
6. i bought a meatball plate at the ikea cafeteria after assembling nothing. the meatballs were not the reward. they were the plan. the assembly was, in retrospect, the obstacle.
7. i did not file my taxes the simple way. i filed them the complicated way, twice, on a sunday, before remembering that mike runs a system. mike’s last filing was 2019, and the system, in his telling, is a hammock with a calendar near it.
8. i ignored a savings account for fourteen months. people called this stupid. i countered with the take that savings accounts are a hobby, mostly for people who already have one, and that the hobby and i had drifted apart on amicable terms. the account is still open. the hobby is not.
9. i bought a fitted sheet without reading the size. it fit the wrong mattress. that mattress was the one i used to have. i have kept the sheet. the sheet, in some sense, is the only continuity between the man i was and the man typing this.
10. i let dave borrow $300. this is on the list because somebody, somewhere, will say it was stupid. it was. but it was the kind of stupid that builds a long-running radio program, and i would not give up the rerun rights for $300.

TEN. ITEMS. NONE. RECANTED.

that’s the list. you’ll notice it does not include moving to a new apartment to escape the bookshelf, because that hasn’t happened yet, but i am keeping the option open. the list is mine. the framing — the tautological, dave-shaped framing — is not.

3. carla just walked past my desk, i minimized this

carla just walked past my desk on her way to the printer. the q3 review broke for printing, which is the kind of thing the q3 review does. i minimized this. she didn’t stop. she did, however, see the word “fork” in 24-point type and i suspect she filed it for later.

carla is the only person in this office who knows the difference between me typing and me working. she has not, to date, ratted me out. that is in the dossier under reasons i do not write any of this from home. back to the list. one of the ten items above is, technically, also held by dave on the phone in the parking lot.

4. dave laughed for nine minutes, also relevant

i told dave, on the phone, that i had compiled the list. he asked if his name was on it. i said he was at the bottom, at item ten. he asked if it was the $300 incident. it was. he laughed for nine minutes. i timed it. the laugh started as a chuckle, escalated into a wheeze, settled into a steady cackle, then resurrected itself twice, like a small movie that didn’t know it was over.

dave’s laugh is the only thing on his books that compounds. he is not stupid. he is, however, a man who borrowed $300 from another man who keeps a fork named sparky in a single drawer. napoleon dynamite, the 2004 film about a small-town teenager whose hobbies are nominal sketches and a llama named tina, treated this kind of patient sincerity more generously than i could on a tuesday. the film had a llama. we have a parking lot. the principle holds.

5. verdict, the list is mine, the framing is not

the list is closed. ten items. each defended. one is the bookshelf with the thirteen-degree lean. one is the seventh microwave. one is dave at the bottom, who is still on the phone, laughing intermittently. carla has come back from the q3 review and gone again, this time with a paper cup.

the framing is what i refuse. stupid people do stupid things is a sentence that wants you to fill the doer-shaped hole with yourself, then explain it. i have filled the act-shaped holes and left the doer alone. acts can be defended. doers, by the time the verdict is in, are usually already at the desk typing the rebuttal.

so. ten acts. one bookshelf. one fork. one third yoga mat. one ikea trip. one $300 transaction with dave. none of them stupid in the way the framing wants. the bookshelf is still leaning. the list is still mine.

carla is back at her own desk. dave hung up. the meeting upstairs broke for the thirteen-minute coffee section, which is when i normally close these.