Puff Daddy or Stupidity is a False Witness

July 11, 2008 by Keli.

People often ask me where I’ve learned so much about stupers and how my stupidity studies started. I explain that I lived with a world class stuper (short for a mystifyingly stupid person) for many years.

I seldom mention my father. In fact, I prefer never bringing him up. In my youth, I was so certain that the man I called “Dad” was an impostor. I believed my real father would show up someday. And he’d be loving, kind and wise. But alas, many blood tests later (our blood types are the same and uncommon), and the poser is definitely the real thing.

From my earliest memories, I realized Dad excelled in lying and bending the truth so out of shape that it lay in a helpless heap on the floor, panting and out of breath. Besides telling falsehoods, Dad’s other greatest weakness lay in his perception of himself in relation to others. He believed everyone was stupid but him, including his wife and children. Hence, he lied freely.

Without revealing too many unpleasant details, I offer two examples of his wayward mind:

First, after my parents’ divorce (I was sixteen at the time; the year my life began), my father commenced telling everyone within earshot his perceived reason for the split between my mother and himself. He even had the audacity to explain his faulty reasoning to me. He said,

“My friends wanna know, why did you get a divorce? I told them it was because of my damn in-laws…”

If one is going to lie, it is important to ensure that the person on the receiving end of the lie either has amnesia or a very short memory. Even more important is for the liar him/herself to have instant recall and/or an impeccable memory.

I took a deep breath and reminded Dad of who used to answer the telephone in our home during the hours in which my mother worked and only father and kids were at home. Me. Then I reminded him of who had been on the other end of the line when I answered said phone. His latest mistress/tramp/floozy. He quickly changed the topic.

Dad had numerous flings during his marriage, and assumed we were blind and deaf. We were not.

The other example occurred just a few days ago. My father called me to say that his doctor discovered that he has an enlarged thyroid which could be cancerous. This doctor wanted to know whether my father’s children (my sister and I) had a history of thyroid issues. At that moment, I placed the receiver down on the kitchen counter as he spoke, and bit my lips and blinked my eyes in utter frustration. Decades have passed, and my father has not made a shred of progress. Since when does a physician ask about your children’s medical history in such a case? They ask about parents’ history, when applicable, for heaven’s sake.

I picked up the phone again. Now he was saying that the doctor insisted that if he doesn’t have an operation immediately, the cancer will grow. It went from “could be cancerous” to a sure thing in two minutes flat. And this ingenious general practitioner physician, according to Dad, had determined all this from a first visit. As we know, stuper doctors do exist, as stupers may be found in every vocation. However, here undoubtedly, all fault lay in my father’s story.

A few years ago, mad at myself for losing my temper over a trivial matter, I complained to my then fourteen-year-old son. My father had a penchant for flying into rages, so I stated that my temper and any failings I had were because of him. My son, being far wiser than myself, said,

“What about all your good qualities? They come from him too. He taught you exactly how not to act.”

Something we should all learn from the stupers among us. How not to behave.

I was exceedingly fortunate when growing up, to have a saintly mother and extraordinary grandparents who more than made up for my father’s shortcomings. I’ve stayed in touch with Dad off and on over the years (off whenever he had a new family; on after each divorce, which happened about three times that I know of), and often wondered why. It would be a lot easier to kiss stupidity goodbye as far as he’s concerned. But the answer is simple. I have so much, and he has so little in his life. And I’ve honed a (mostly) even temper and other desirable qualities, thanks to him.

Think.

Keli

Keli@counterfeithumans.com

Posted in Plain Old Fashioned Stupidity, Relative stupidity | 7 Comments »