Nobody’s perfect. Even geniuses like Albert Einstein or Stephen Hawking have quirks. But sometimes smart people just say some really dumb things. From dangerous lapses in judgment to idiotic beliefs, these people shared their bafflement at dumb encounters with people they thought were smart.
1. Don’t Play With Fire
One time I was at my friend Claudio’s apartment with his brother, just hanging out and watching a movie. All of a sudden, I heard a whoosh and saw a big flash of light. I looked over at Claudio, and his hair was on fire.
We put it out quickly, and I asked him what had happened. He told me, “I was trying to hear the sound the lighter made when I flicked it.” We hadn’t had anything to drink or taken anything at the time.
2. A Weighty Subject
My father-in-law is extremely intelligent. He taught himself how to solve a Rubik’s Cube without looking anything up, and he’s generally brilliant at math, logic, puzzles, and all that. But then there’s this one area where all reason seems to disappear.
He believes dinosaurs couldn’t have been real because they would have been too large for their skeletons to support their weight. He has plenty of other bad ideas too, because he’s so smart that he thinks he can reason his way to the right answer without researching anything or following the scientific process.
3. Got You Covered
I’ve been waiting forever to tell this story. Two members of my family are very highly intelligent...or at least I always thought so. I went to their house, and they had just installed an above-ground pool that came with a pool cover.
Instead of using the pool cover, they went out and bought all these insulated pink foam boards—one-inch thick, four-by-eight-foot sheets. I just sat there and watched them cut the foam into puzzle pieces so it would fit their round pool. It completely confused me.
I asked why they were doing it, and they said it was to keep leaves out of the pool. So every time they wanted to swim, they had to remove all the pieces, then clean the pool because tiny bits of pink insulation were floating on top. And when they were done for the day, they spent an hour trying to fit all the puzzle pieces back together over the pool.
The original pool cover was sitting right there by the pool, still in the bag it came in. It was one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever seen.
4. Just A Scratch
My father-in-law could build a new bladder out of part of your own intestinal lining if you had bladder cancer and needed one. He has saved thousands of lives that otherwise might have been lost to kidney, prostate, and urinary tract diseases.
One time he told me that someone driving a bright yellow car was deliberately hitting his Mercedes. They had sideswiped it once while he was at the hospital. He got it repaired, and it cost thousands of dollars.
Then a few weeks later, the same bright yellow vehicle did it again, this time nearly ripping off his fender and leaving a huge yellow scrape down the side of the car. He took it to the body shop a second time.
During his next visit to the hospital, the funny truth came out. The parking attendant said, “Hey doc, good to see you. But I should warn you... security was here, and they’re pretty upset about the fire hydrant you’ve hit twice in the past month. I tried to cover for you, but apparently they’ve got it on video.”
5. Pronunciation Class
My ninth-grade English teacher tried to suspend me for pronouncing “debris” correctly. She insisted it was pronounced “de-briss.” I’m not kidding—she sent me to the principal’s office with a note saying that I had “willfully disagreed with her and should be suspended for disrespecting an elder.”
The principal, who was already a pretty cool guy, had me sort mail for an hour. When the hour was almost over, he and I went back up to the classroom, interrupted her lecture on whatever we were studying, and calmly proved her wrong.
He said, “The word is pronounced the way [my name] said it, not debriss. Please remember that next time, unless you’d rather excuse yourself from this school for a week instead of [my name] being suspended for one.”
She was completely embarrassed, and to this day, when kids who were in that class run into her, they call her Miss—or Mrs., I’m not sure—Debriss.
6. Stay In School, Kids
When I was growing up, I honestly thought I was some kind of once-in-a-generation genius, and if I’m being fair, my school’s low standards definitely helped me believe that. I found out otherwise when I met a real genius during my freshman year of college.
He was 18 and already studying physics at a seriously advanced level, composing music, playing piano beautifully, and writing a novel. The problem was that, at 18, he just wasn’t mature enough for college. He never went to class because he thought he didn’t need to, and once Skyrim came out, he basically stopped leaving his dorm.
He was the smartest person I’ve ever met, before or since, and he failed out in his very first semester.
7. Human Warning Label
For about 25 years now, around 20 of my old high school friends, along with their wives and girlfriends, have gotten together once a year at a huge farm for a “Big Chill”-style weekend.
One morning, one of my friends was the first one awake and decided to make himself some toast and coffee. His bread got stuck in the toaster, and he was just about to try fishing it out with a metal kitchen utensil.
A girlfriend of another friend, who had only met him late the night before and barely knew him, walked into the kitchen, saw what he was about to do, and said, “Stop right now! You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know you could get electrocuted sticking a metal utensil in a toaster!” But here’s the funny part.
My friend holding the utensil actually was a NASA rocket scientist who monitored Space Shuttle launches. Needless to say, he was pretty embarrassed.
8. Trojan Horse
A friend of mine at school was very tech-savvy and absolutely convinced he knew how to temporarily disable the school’s internet filter so we could play games on the school computers without anyone noticing. What we didn’t realize was how badly this could go.
He downloaded an .exe file from the internet at home, saved it to a flash drive, and brought it to school, where he accidentally released a trojan virus across the entire system. He got suspended for two weeks, and nobody could get much work done for weeks while tech support tried to clean up the mess.
9. Smart On Paper
My best friend in high school had a younger brother who scored something like 1550 on his SATs, which was an absurdly high score. His parents were thrilled when he told them, but their excitement turned to disbelief when he added, “Yeah, it probably would’ve been easier if I’d remembered to bring a calculator.”
So they had him retake the test with a calculator, and he absolutely crushed it. At that point, the world was wide open for him. A bunch of Ivy League schools contacted him, and several offered full scholarships. He had plenty of great options, but in the end, he made a pretty questionable choice.
He decided to go to the local community college so he could stay near his girlfriend.
History's most fascinating stories and darkest secrets, delivered to your inbox daily.
10. Lighthouse In The Desert
I was head of security at a major commercial building in Cambridge. It was a hub for some of the smartest people imaginable, working for some of the best companies in the world. The collective brainpower in that place was incredible.
And yet, we once had to send an officer to the train station wearing a GoPro on his head just so new employees could follow a literal step-by-step video showing them how to get there, because they kept getting lost. The station was right next door. The spoken directions were simply: “turn left.” But that wasn’t even the worst of it.
People also struggled with the revolving door, got stuck in the elevator because they needed to press “open” to open the door, and the list goes on and on. The maintenance guy had a perfect description for them: he said they were “like lighthouses in the desert—extremely bright but absolutely useless,” and honestly, it fit a little too well.
11. No Mask No Problem
My brother is a very smart guy studying physics at one of the top 15 universities in the world. He was supposed to spend a year in Texas when Covid was starting to ease and travel restrictions were relaxing, but he never got to go because of visa issues.
I remember one conversation we had when we still thought he’d be going to Texas. I said something like, “Be careful when you get there, because they don’t really seem to take Covid seriously and they’re still hosting big sporting events at your university.”
He turned, looked me straight in the eye, and said one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard: “There isn’t any Covid in Texas, which is why they don’t wear masks.”
It turned out he honestly didn’t realize how self-centered people can be. He assumed that if people weren’t wearing masks, it must mean there was no Covid there, because surely they’d be sensible enough to wear them otherwise.
12. Keeping It Cold
My friend is smart in the academic sense, but he can also be unbelievably clueless. The best example is only about a month old. My girlfriend and I were moving into another house, and we still had some food in the fridge, about 40€ worth.
We asked if we could keep it in his fridge and I’d take it back once mine was switched on. He agreed, and I gave him the food the day before the move. Then the next day, he showed up at my old place carrying a bag. Right away, I had a feeling he’d done something foolish.
When I asked what was in it, he said, “Your food.” I asked where he expected to put it, and he said, “In your fridge, idiot.” I replied, “The fridge that’s unplugged, that I still need to move, and then wait before plugging back in?”
There was a long silence from everyone there. In the end, we had to throw the food away because most of it was baby food, and I didn’t want to risk making my daughter sick. To be fair, he did pay me back, but only after I asked, and he definitely wasn’t pleased about it.
13. What’s Old Is New
Back in the mid-90s, I was trying to buy a hard-to-find part for one of my customers. I finally located one at a company in New Jersey. When I told the woman on the phone that I needed it shipped to New Mexico, she informed me that they didn’t ship outside the country.
I said, “Not OLD Mexico. NEW Mexico.” She replied, “Yes, but it’s still MEXICO, and we only ship within the United States.” After a serious face-palm moment, I spent a while explaining that New Mexico was in fact a U.S. state, and where it was located.
Even after that, she said, “I’ve never heard of it before, and I don’t understand why they’d name a state after another country.” I guess it never occurred to her that she lived in a state named after part of another country. I finally told her to check with someone else in the office, so she put me on hold for a bit.
When she came back, she said, “I was told that we can make an exception to our shipping policy for this order.”
14. If It Ain’t Broke
This was my sister-in-law and her boyfriend, who lived together at the time. He’s a lawyer, and she’s in a senior role at a company making very good money. One day they got into their car, and the check engine light came on. Instead of handling it like most people would, they immediately got out and called a cab because, in their words, “the engine is broken.”
15. Inside The Orb
In fifth or sixth grade, I was talking with a friend about space travel. She started telling me how incredible it was that rockets could break through a solid layer of earth so quickly when launching. I was confused, so I tried to explain that the atmosphere isn’t solid.
She kept insisting—and then I realized something very strange. She actually thought we lived inside the Earth. She even drew me a diagram to show what she meant.
It was a circle with stick figures walking along the inside edge. When she thought I still didn’t get it, she said, “You know, like a Wonderball.” She was amazed to learn that we actually live on the outside surface of the Earth. She also believed gravity worked like those carnival rides where you stick to the wall, which honestly was at least a little closer.
16. Screened In
When I was in my final year studying physics at university, we had a professor who got really annoyed by the pull cord for the projector screen because it hung down in front of the whiteboard.
Every morning, he’d spend a couple of minutes trying to toss the weighted end of the cord over the light fixture above the board, usually taking anywhere from five to 30 tries.
The whole class would offer advice and cheer him on, and over time it became a running joke to see how long it would take each morning. Then, after months of this, one day near the end of the term we had a substitute teacher.
The substitute walked up to the board and, without even pausing, grabbed the cord and hooked it over a thumbtack pinned into the cork at the top of the whiteboard. The entire class gasped at the exact same time.
The substitute spun around and asked what was wrong, and everyone just started laughing. Eventually someone explained, and we all had a good laugh over the fact that a whole room full of physics majors had never thought of that solution—or even noticed the thumbtack had apparently been there for that exact reason all along.
17. Pump It Up
I’ll admit it: I’m pretty smart. I got a 1540 on the SAT, a 34 on the ACT, graduated valedictorian in high school, and finished college cum laude with a degree in aerospace engineering. A couple of years ago, my sump pump stopped working, and I figured out the float switch had gone bad.
So I bought a replacement float switch, took the pump apart, swapped out the switch, put everything back together, plugged it in, and tested it by lifting the float by hand. It worked perfectly. Then I lowered it back into the sump pit so I could reconnect everything. That’s when I made a huge mistake.
What I forgot to do was unplug it before lowering it back into the pit, so the float switch immediately triggered and blasted a stream of dirty, rusty water straight into my face and all over the utility room. After I finally got it turned off, I just sat there for a moment, blinking water out of my eyes and saying out loud, “You idiot.”
18. Spoon Fiasco
I’m not a genius, but I don’t think I’m an idiot either. At least, that’s what I thought until I was trying to scoop some ice cream that was so frozen solid it was bending my spoons. So naturally, I decided the smart solution was to warm the spoon up by putting it in the microwave.
Before too long, something happened that made me stop the microwave—I don’t remember exactly what, since this was about six years ago—and when I opened the door, the spoon had a faint blue tint. And what did I do next? I grabbed it with my bare hand, of course. It was so hot it burned me badly and even stuck to my index finger.
19. So Novel
Back in college, I had a friend with a 4.0 GPA who was on track to finish her bachelor’s degree in just two years. She was incredibly smart. One night we were driving around, and I jokingly said to our mutual friend, who was driving, “Oh look, an adult novelty store—let’s stop and browse.”
My genius friend immediately replied, “Ugh, I hate books.” That still makes me laugh every time I remember it.
20. When The Moon Hits Your Eye
I’m pretty smart too—I’m in several advanced classes and all that. One time, though, my family was on a road trip at night, and the moon was really bright with an orange glow. For some reason, I didn’t realize it was the moon, so I asked, “What’s that big orange glowing thing in the sky?”
My whole family burst out laughing and told me it was the moon. Let’s just say they still haven’t let me forget that one.
21. Leveled Out
Not exactly foolish, but definitely surprising: I’ve worked with a lot of engineers, and unless you have a PhD, many of them seem completely convinced they’re smarter than you. In reality, they’re often excellent at planning and logistics, but usually not great at troubleshooting. The problem is, they’re so confident they never seem to notice it.
Just today, I had to explain to an engineer that the reason his level showed a shelf as uneven was because the wall itself wasn’t level, and he wasn’t placing the level squarely on the shelf. So the shelf was level side to side, but not front to back, and he had me drive all the way out to the site just to show him how to use a level properly.
This took 45 minutes. First he insisted he could tell just by looking at it. Then he said his level must be broken. Then he said my level must be broken. Then he decided that since he couldn’t see the problem, it must actually be level. Apparently it was magic.
22. Heat Warning
I’m not sure if I count as smart, but I definitely did something very dumb a few years ago. I had just bought my first bike with disc brakes.
While cycling to work, I started thinking, “I bet disc brakes get really hot. There’s a lot of energy being dumped into a pretty small piece of metal. Let’s see, 10 m/s, 100 kg, maybe around 5 kJ… but the actual heat would depend on cooling, and they’re thin and sitting in a 10 m/s stream of air. I wonder how hot they really get?”
At the next stoplight, I bent down and touched the disc with my thumb to find out. Sizzle. Instant regret. Even worse, I had just bought a phone with fingerprint unlock the week before, and since I had burned off the ridges on my thumb, I suddenly couldn’t unlock my phone.
The ridges grew back after a week or two, and I could use my phone normally again. Kind of fascinating, honestly.
23. The Cherry On Top
This happened to one of my best friends, who is now a surgeon and is genuinely one of the smartest people I know. During his first year of med school, he came back to his hometown during a break. We were at a restaurant catching up, and he ordered a milkshake for dessert that came with a maraschino cherry on top.
He happily ate it and then said something like, “I love maraschino cherries. I could eat a million of these. I’ve always wanted to buy a jar and eat the whole thing myself.” I said, “John, you’re 24 years old. You own a house, have money in the bank, and you’re in med school. You’re an adult. If you want a jar of maraschino cherries, you can just go buy one. We can stop at the store right after this.”
He spent about five minutes trying to process this revelation. You could practically see the gears turning in his head. Then he looked at me with this huge, almost childlike smile and said, “Let’s go now!”
So we paid the bill and went straight to the nearest grocery store.
John bought the biggest jar of maraschino cherries they had and immediately started eating them. After that, we went to a house party, where he refused to drink anything but kept eating cherries from the jar. Long story short, he finished the entire jar in about an hour.
But that wasn’t even the best part.
About fifteen minutes later, he spent the rest of the evening throwing up bright red cherries.
24. Bike Trouble
This was a guy I used to work with. He was quiet and soft-spoken, but incredibly perceptive. He had a real talent for reading a situation and getting straight to the heart of the problem.
Then one very snowy winter day, he decided to ride his motorbike to work. His reasoning was that the roads would be packed with slow-moving cars, and he’d be able to slip past them on the bike. What actually happened was that he found himself struggling just to keep the bike upright, with a lorry only inches behind him.
He said one small slide and he would have gone right under that lorry. The next day, he drove his four-wheel-drive to work instead. Lesson learned.
25. Mail Mishap
My brother was home from college and had accidentally left a set of keys at his friend’s house. This friend had graduated third in his high school class and had a full scholarship to study engineering. My brother asked him to mail the keys back.
The friend mailed the keys to himself.
He put his own name and address on the envelope, and my brother’s name and address as the return address.
26. Call The Pros
My brother-in-law had a master’s degree in physics and math and taught high school. When he had a new house built, he figured he could save some money by putting up the drywall himself. It went very badly.
He somehow drove nails into a hot water pipe and some electrical wiring. By the time he paid a plumber and an electrician to repair everything, it ended up costing much more. Later in life, he died in a tragic ladder accident.
27. Unicorn Of The Sea
I’m a 21-year-old guy who’s supposedly pretty smart, and I only recently found out that narwhals are real. I think I had always assumed they were basically sea unicorns that someone invented as a joke.
Up to that point, I’m pretty sure I had only ever seen them in cartoons or drawings. So I’m watching Frozen Planet with my roommates, friends, and fiancée, and my mind is completely blown. I jumped out of my chair and shouted because I thought the Discovery Channel crew had made some huge scientific discovery.
Two weeks later, they were still making fun of me over those giant-tusked porpoises, and I don’t think they’re stopping anytime soon.
28. The IT Guy
I worked in IT at a university. We got a call that a printer would not turn on. The person who called was very much the stereotypical “I have a doctorate, so I know everything” type.
Anyway, I got to the classroom, and they pointed out the printer, insisting they had already checked everything, including the power strip, unplugging it, plugging it back in, and all of that. They were irritated and rude the entire time I was there.
While I looked it over, they kept getting more upset, saying they had already checked the power cables and everything was fine. Without saying a word, I unplugged the power strip from itself, plugged it into the wall, turned on the printer, and walked out.
29. Bio-Technology Problems
My former college biology teacher at a biotech college is incredibly smart. She works in molecular diagnosis of HPV, is brilliant at genetics, is a fantastic teacher, has been part of research projects, and can casually write in mirror image without even looking.
But she would spend up to 30 minutes trying to get the projector working. It happened almost every day. Sometimes she would give up and use the board instead, even though drawing was clearly not her strength. I haven’t heard from her in a few years, but I hope she’s doing well and still battling an HDMI cable somewhere.
30. Floating In Space
It was a beautiful day in Washington, DC. My wife and I were visiting her best friend, just relaxing, when we somehow started talking about Apollo 13. We all agreed it was a great movie. But somewhere in the conversation, while discussing the impressive special effects and filming techniques, my wife mentioned those “anti-gravity chambers.”
“Huh?” I said. “You know,” she replied, “the anti-gravity chambers. That’s how they got the actors to float around.” At first I thought she was joking, but the more I asked, the more I realized she was completely serious. “There is no such thing as an anti-gravity chamber!” I said. Then her best friend joined in, making things even more surreal.
“There absolutely is!” her friend said, laughing. “How else do they train astronauts for space missions?” I just stared. “Um...” I said. “There are lots of ways, actually. Water training. Vacuum training. I don’t know all of NASA’s procedures, but anti-gravity chambers are not real.”
They argued with me on and off for the rest of the afternoon. Thankfully, it’s something we can all laugh about now.
31. It’s A Zoo Out There
Early in my career, I got into a debate with some coworkers about the ethics of zoos. I’ve generally been against zoos as a concept, while they were in favor of them. At the time, I was also a lot more outspoken about my opinions.
One of my arguments was about moose. In the wild, they need several hectares of habitat, but the one lonely moose at our local zoo had a pen about the size of a garage, surrounded by steel fencing, with maybe four spruce saplings. Moose are also native to our country, so there really didn’t seem to be any good reason to keep them in captivity.
One coworker argued that zoos were important because otherwise her kid would never get to see a real tiger. I thought that was a pretty weak argument. The other coworker said he had seen plenty of moose in the wild and never saw them moving, so clearly they didn’t need that much space.
That was, and still is, the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard anyone say. And I’ve heard plenty of bad takes over the years. He said it with such confidence that I was completely speechless. It was so absurd that I just stopped arguing right there. I had nothing left to say to someone that stubborn.
Nothing since has ever topped that moment, and even though it happened more than ten years ago, I still bring it up now and then. On top of that, during a coffee break, both of them revealed that they believed in bioresonance and regularly paid for treatments to help with their allergies and other issues.
Other than that, they were pretty normal, reasonably intelligent people, good with computers, and so on. I try not to judge people or make them feel small, but since they usually came across as know-it-alls, those two moments completely destroyed my confidence in their judgment.
32. Totally Nuclear
My eighth-grade science teacher once explained to me and the class how wrong I was for thinking nuclear fission existed on Earth. She said it only happened in the sun and in the Earth’s core. Then she made me write a report on it and present it to the class the very next day to show what I had learned. She had no idea how wrong she was.
The funny part was that I had already done that exact report in seventh grade and had fallen in love with nuclear science. She didn’t realize she was about to get a full lesson in return. I had never felt so embarrassed in my life in that moment.
The next day, after I gave my presentation, several of my classmates asked the teacher, in their own teenage way, whether I could just teach the class instead.
I had never felt so proud or so happy. Ever, at least up to that point.
33. Zapped In The Slammer
I’m a 31-year-old man, and I spent some time in prison a while back. As you can imagine, you meet all kinds of people there. One guy I used to play chess with and share the newspaper with was a college professor on the outside. He was clearly an intelligent person.
One day he decided he wanted to clean the large industrial fan in the dorm, the kind of heavy iron fan you’d see in a warehouse. So he carried it into the shower to clean it. It was unplugged. Then he brought it back out to its stand absolutely soaked and dripping wet.
Then he plugged it in and pulled the cord.
I was so shocked that he was actually doing it that for a second I thought it had to be some kind of joke. But no, the little dance he did afterward was very real.
34. Do The Work
Back in college, I knew a guy who was smart and creative, which was useful since we were studying games, animation, and visual effects. We had a friendly rivalry and usually finished our assignments early, so we often spent our extra time helping other students with their projects, whether that meant grabbing supplies, helping with filming, or assisting with VFX work.
One time, while we were talking about making sure our assignments were fully finished and ready to turn in, he said he had already completed his and was just enjoying his free time.
We went to check on the other students so we could help out. I ended up getting pulled into helping people with stop-motion animation, while he stood in the doorway, looked around at everyone, and said, “If they can’t do the work by themselves, maybe they shouldn’t be in the course,” before walking off. Karma caught up with him in a big way.
He ended up failing the module while everyone else passed. Because he then had to spend the rest of the year catching up, he ended up having to repeat the year. I didn’t feel too bad for him, because after that he was generally just a huge jerk.
The lesson is simple: the moment you start thinking you’re the smartest person in the room is often the moment you become the least wise, because you’re underestimating everyone else and overestimating yourself.
35. Soda Smarts
I was once bartending at a volunteer event with a group of other volunteers, most of whom were physics PhD students. I remember one of them trying for about 20 seconds to fit a two-liter soda bottle into a mini fridge, but it just wouldn’t go in.
So I stepped in and turned the bottle sideways to the left, and it slid right in horizontally with plenty of room to spare.
What can I say? I’ve got soda-bottle smarts.
36. Sick Soiree
This happened pretty recently. My friend lives in Cincinnati, and in mid-December they came down with the flu. They’re huge Cincinnati Bengals and Tampa Bay Buccaneers fans. Even though they were sick, my friend still decided to go to the airport, get on a plane, and fly to Tampa. They spent the whole week partying, then got back on another plane and flew home to Cincinnati.
Over the next 10 days or so, they kept posting pictures from different bars with captions like, “No idea why I’m still sick! Guess I’ll just drink through it,” or, “Still can’t shake this, who wants to grab a drink?” It was one of the most confusing things I’ve ever seen this person do.
Could they really not put together that unnecessary travel and a lot of alcohol might be making them feel even worse? Not to mention exposing other people in the process.
37. Not So Smartypants
I used to be in a special ed class with this boy, who I’ll call J. J was actually a very smart kid. He got good grades; he just struggled with understanding certain subjects. Our teacher really praised him for that, and I think it started to go to his head. That’s when he made a big mistake.
One day, he got so full of himself over his grades that he told the teacher he didn’t need the class and could easily get all As without it. The moment he told his mom he wanted to quit, his grades dropped fast. He was back in the class within about two weeks, and the rest of us pretty much lost whatever little respect we still had for him.
38. Give Me A Ring
My phone fell out of my pocket as I was getting into my car at the post office. Luckily, someone picked it up, turned it in at the post office, and posted on the town’s community Facebook page saying it was there. I had my car registration in the phone case, so they knew it belonged to me.
My sister-in-law saw the Facebook post and… called my phone to tell me my phone had been found. That’s probably going to follow her around for a while.
39. Can’t Compute
My doctor. During the time in my life when I was dating my ex-girlfriend, my doctor insisted every single time I saw him that I needed to be on birth control because it was important for preventing pregnancy.
No matter how many times I explained that I was in a monogamous relationship with a woman, he still kept bringing it up. It just never seemed to register.
40. Made To Measure
I used to date a surgical resident in one of the most competitive specialties at one of the most prestigious hospitals in the world.
This man was incredibly smart. His name is literally printed in the study book people use for the USMLE/Step Exam because he scored so exceptionally well. At the same time, though, he was also one of the most clueless people I’ve ever met.
Two moments from our time together really stand out:
First, we were baking a cake, and the recipe called for 1/2 teaspoon of something. We didn’t have a 1/2 teaspoon measure, so I started filling the 1 teaspoon spoon halfway. He stopped me and said, “What are you d-… ohhh, I thou-… never mind.”
When I asked what he meant, I found out he thought I was supposed to use the little shallow indentation on the handle where the measurement is stamped.
Second, the first time he met my whole family, we were at a Christmas tree farm, and he asked my mother, who is a high school science teacher, whether the tree grows back after you cut it down. I wish you could have seen her face.
41. Easy Fix
I’m either really smart, or my family is really bad with basic tech. They call me over for every little problem, even when the fix is incredibly simple. One time, there was a pop-up window on the TV and they had no idea how to close it.
So they called me in to handle it. I picked up the remote and pressed “cancel,” which, by the way, was the only button on the screen. Problem solved, and a complete waste of my time. Another time, my mom had been paying for a subscription she didn’t even want for around five months. I asked if she had tried canceling it, and she said no because she didn’t know how.
She didn’t even spend a minute trying to figure it out and just kept paying for something useless. I ended up canceling it for her, even though she uses a Mac all the time and I’ve barely touched one. Seriously, why are some people so unwilling to try things themselves?
It’s not like this is some impossible science. Sometimes you just have to give it a shot and see if you can fix it on your own.
42. The Boxer
My boss is a very smart guy. He used to work as an electrician, picks up hands-on jobs like he’s been doing them forever after seeing them once, can draw up blueprints for complicated things from scratch, and somehow manages to keep all ten of us fools safe through every shift all week.
And yet, every single time, I’ve seen him get completely defeated by one of our boxes because it has to be folded in a specific way instead of taped shut. Honestly, one of the best parts of my job is when we get a new hire and he has to show them how to fold that ridiculous box. It always turns into some bent, taped-up disaster.
43. That Can’t Be
My downstairs neighbor is from India, and he’s lived here in the US for 16 years. He works as a developer for a large company and makes a very good income. We’re good friends, and every now and then we end up talking about life. But whenever religion comes up, I usually learn something surprising that he doesn’t seem to know.
One time, he asked me why, if I believe in dinosaurs, I don’t also believe in God. He’s said similar things about galaxies after I mentioned that billions of them exist. Today I told him that the fuel that powers his car comes from plants and animals that decomposed hundreds of millions of years ago.
He laughed and said I’ll believe anything. At the same time, he believes that when he dies, he’ll be greeted by 72 “untainted women.”
44. Get Me Out Of Here
I recently did an escape room with my husband and his brother. I always thought my husband was a pretty smart person...until his brother and I managed to unlock his cell from inside ours, and he still couldn’t figure out how to open ours.
He was stuck by himself in the other room for a solid five minutes before a voice came over the speaker and told him, “The big green button on the center console that says ‘open all cell doors’ will, in fact...open all cell doors.” Poor guy is probably never going to hear the end of that one.
45. As The Romans Do
My 23-year-old girlfriend took AP classes, but somehow had no idea what Roman numerals were. She was making a poster for an event I was hosting and asked me, “What’s the code for this one?” It took me a minute to realize she meant the event number printed at the bottom of all our posters.
I tried explaining how Roman numerals work, but she insisted she already knew what they were and didn’t want to keep talking about it. Then she asked me again what the code was. She also still thinks north is whichever direction you’re facing, east is to your right, south is behind you, and west is to your left.
46. Selective Smarts
My best friend had a 95% average in high school, took advanced classes, and graduated with honors. I’ve also watched her walk straight into doors while staring right at them, try to lick frozen poles, and completely forget what we were talking about halfway through a conversation. One time, she insisted the sky was covered with clouds when it was a perfectly clear night and we could see the stars. She also tried to argue that turning the oven to the highest setting would just make her pizza cook faster. Yes, it somehow came out both burnt and undercooked.
47. Sparkle Smarts
I had a roommate during my first two years of college who was incredibly smart. I mean not just straight As, but 100% on nearly every assignment, and sometimes even higher because of bonus questions. In every subject, too. She had always been like that.
I met her in second grade, and she had always been a quick learner. She could teach other people, remember information, analyze it, apply it—the whole package. What I’m saying is, she was genuinely brilliant.
She also decided it was a good idea to use glitter spray paint on a costume she was making. Inside the apartment. With no ventilation. Nothing covering the floor. And right in front of the balcony door. There was glitter paint stuck on the floor for almost a year. It was such a mess.
48. Fire And Water
A girl I used to work with thought people should stop boiling water completely because one day it was going to “burn up the world’s water supply.” I didn’t really understand what she meant, so I asked her to explain it to me as if I knew nothing.
She said the steam coming off water was like the smoke that comes off wood when it burns, destroying the water until it eventually “burned away” and never came back. As politely as I could, I explained what was actually happening, and her response was, “I don’t think that’s right, so I’ll have to read up on it when I get home.” I really hope she did.
49. Which Came First, The Factory Or The Egg
My neighbor of 22 years—basically my whole life—is in her mid-40s. She believes eggs are made in factories. Not that they come from chickens and are processed in factories, but that humans or machines actually make them there from basic materials.
We once passed a sign by the road that said “one dozen chicken eggs - $1,” and she made a very obvious sound of disgust. Confused, my mom asked, “Why ‘ugh’?”
Neighbor: “I can’t believe people actually eat chicken eggs.”
Mom: “You eat eggs all the time...”
Neighbor: “Those are the white eggs, from factories. Not the brown ones from chickens.”
50. How Many Programmers Does It Take To Change A Lightbulb
The original owner of a house I bought a few years ago was a very smart person. He was a programmer, and just from talking to him, you could tell he was highly intelligent. He was great with books and technology, but not handy at all. He couldn’t even change a light bulb. When one burned out, he would call someone and pay them to replace it.
When we moved into the house, one of the first things I had to do was replace light bulbs, because about 95% of them were burned out. I’ve never seen someone so smart who also couldn’t handle such basic tasks. Google or YouTube can help a lot—it really isn’t that difficult.
