complete idiots — an explainer, sort of

complete idiots is plural for a reason, because no singular form of this condition survives contact with a group chat, an elevator, or a sunday family dinner with the relatives in attendance. i have tested all three, and the plural always wins, and the plural always includes me.

friday, 10:38am. drafting between two slack pings i intend to ignore. the boss left for a vendor breakfast that started at nine and, by the energy of the floor, is still happening.

so the working theory, arrived at last night on the kitchen tile because the chair was too far, is that complete idiots only show up in groups. one idiot, alone, is just a friday. two, with a microwave between them, is a sitcom. three or more is a category. a small voting bloc. and once you start counting, your own name is on the list, in your handwriting, with a star next to it.

complete idiots: the plural noun for adults who, in the company of other adults, manage to make a single bad decision feel collaborative. complete idiots travel in groups, share group chats, and produce a microwave statistic of one ruined appliance per fourteen months. i have data. the data is me.

i’m clear on the singular — i wrote about idiot meaning in a separate sitting — but the plural is its own animal. the plural is what carla saw on the elevator at 9:14 this morning, when four of us got in on floor two and three pushed lobby and the fourth pushed eleven and not one of us said anything for the eight floors it took to figure out who was wrong.

the plural form, and why it matters more than the singular

here is the part the dictionary, in its dignified silence, refuses to admit. complete idiots is not idiot with an s. it’s a different species. it operates differently. when an idiot, alone, kills a microwave — and i am, for the record, on number seven, which dave keeps the list of — that is a private event. a man and a fork and a flash of light and a phone call.

but when complete idiots, plural, kill a microwave: one suggests it. one gets the fork. one holds the phone for the video. one says “are you sure” in a voice that, on review, was not stopping anything. afterward, on the group chat, the four of them laugh in seventeen messages and not one types the words that was a mistake. the plural absorbs the mistake. the plural distributes it across enough people that no single member has to carry it home.

why we travel in packs, allegedly

i asked mom about this on sunday. she said “you’re calling on a sunday, which means you spent something”. i said no. she said “did you spend something”. i said maybe. mothers have the gift.

her answer, paraphrased through the static of a kitchen phone she still uses on a cord, was: people don’t travel in packs because it’s safer. they travel in packs because alone they would have to admit something. she said this while the kettle whistled. she did not name what the something was. she didn’t have to.

the group chat we’ve all muted, including the one running it

i muted the group chat in october. i did not leave it. the difference is what makes us complete idiots, plural, instead of the kind of singular idiots who at least commit to a position. leaving says something. muting says nothing, while pretending you are still listening, while the unread number climbs to 99+, which is a small horror you don’t open because to open it is to admit you missed dave’s birthday, again, and somebody’s baby’s foot, and a question about someone’s father that was, in retrospect, important.

this is the move. complete idiots preserve the appearance of the relationship while archiving the relationship. a feat nobody applauds because everybody is doing it.

the 2 am revelation that we are, in fact, many

at 2 am on a thursday, last week, i woke up and lay flat on my back and had what i’ll call, generously, a thought: everyone i know has the same three problems. nobody has different problems. we have the same rent problem, the same chair problem, the same i-don’t-call-my-friend problem. the only thing that varies is which of the three is, this month, on fire.

i sat up. i wrote it on my phone. in the morning the note said “we are many. it’s an inventory.” i don’t fully remember writing it. i stand by it.

this is what makes complete idiots a category and not just an insult. we are many. the kitchen tile knows. so does the seventh microwave, currently sitting in my cupboard with a small black mark on the inside — that mark is not just mine. somewhere, on a different floor of a different building, another complete idiot is making the same mark for the same reason and not telling his dave about it for at least six hours.

WE ARE NOT ALONE. WE ARE NOT EVEN RARE.

brenda the dead plant, a witness

brenda is the dead plant. brenda has been the dead plant since approximately february. brenda’s cause of death is, on paper, dehydration. brenda’s actual cause of death is that i forgot brenda existed, on a corner of the kitchen counter that i don’t look at, between the toaster i use and the toaster i don’t.

brenda watched the seventh microwave’s life from her corner. she watched the third yoga mat be carried in, used once, and exiled to under the couch, possibly evolving. her silence, for fourteen months, is itself a vote. she did not have to die. she died because i, in the company of every other complete idiot in this building and the next, decided that watering brenda was something for the version of me who lives next week.

which brings me to the take.

verdict, we are complete, also numerous

so where does that leave us. complete idiots, the plural, the category, the voting bloc. it leaves us, by my estimate, in the majority. the singular is a rumor. the plural is the population. and the population is, on a friday at 10:38am, mostly at desks that aren’t theirs, drafting things they shouldn’t be drafting.

i used to think the goal was to graduate out of the plural — to become the singular idiot, the one who, alone, makes his one private mistake and washes the dish afterwards. i no longer think this. the singular is what you tell yourself you are when you don’t want to call mom back.

if you want the singular angle, i wrote the pillar version, defined with credentials. there is also stupid, which i’d like to disagree with on procedural grounds, moron, which i looked into and it turned out the shoe fit, and the elif batuman novel, which i have not read. one condition, plural form.

an email just arrived with the subject “quick question”. i will not be quick. i will not be answering. carla is back on the floor and walking with paper, which means a real meeting, which means thirty more minutes for me.

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