They say only two things are infinite: The universe, and human stupidity. We can't say for sure about the universe, but the second part is right on. From clueless customers to painfully thick partners, humanity has clearly left natural selection behind. But it's not all bad—without idiots like these running amok, we'd never get to read about their absolutely hilarious antics!
1. Repeat Outfitter
A friend of mine is a lawyer, and he said that of all his clients, the stupidest one he ever had was this guy. This poor lawyer had a client turn up to court in the exact same outfit that he was wearing in the burglary footage. When the CCTV tape came up in evidence, the client looked down on himself and was like, “oooooh no.”
2. Biology Tutor Needed
I demolished my right foot in a motorcycle crash and had to have the top of my foot removed. A guy I worked with asked me when it would grow back. I explained that the skin and stuff was going to have to be grafted, but that the tendons and bones that had been removed were gone forever. He looked me straight in the eye and asked, "Why don't they just cut the whole thing off and let it grow back?"
3. What’s in a Name?
A co-worker of mine bought a low-flow showerhead. A few days later, I asked him if he had noticed a difference while in the shower. He gave me a funny look, and then explained that he didn’t take showers. Apparently, he had filled his BATHTUB using the new low-flow showerhead because he thought it would use less water!
4. Balls Out
As a teenager, I worked at a bowling alley. Within an hour, a new girl was fired on the spot for dropping a ball on the foot of a complaining patron. Fastest I've ever seen someone get fired.
5. Who Let The Cat Out?
I am a personal injury lawyer, and I work in the UK. I took a call from this potential client that had fallen down the stairs in her own home. She had tripped over her own cat. She told me that she wanted to sue her local authority as the council owned her home and she was not allowed to keep pets as part of her lease.
She claimed that when the house was inspected, no one told her to get rid of the cat. It was therefore the council's fault that she fell down the stairs. We didn't take the case.
6. A Bit Shallow
I went on a date with a girl and she talked about a quiz she got in one of her classes that day. It was a bunch of common knowledge trivia. One question was to name an ocean that borders the US. She said "Myrtle Beach." There were 50 questions like this. She got only one right. We're in college. She's going to be a teacher.
7. No Momma’s Boy
I dated a guy for about a month until I found out he didn't realize women's bodies made actual milk to feed their babies. He thought "feeding" a baby was just a way to hold a baby while giving it a bottle. I told him he was an idiot. He said with a disgusted sneer, "I didn't know that because I have never known any woman, who had or would eed their child like that.”
Well, I had with my son…he called me deranged.
8. A Bumpy Ride
The first time I thought my boyfriend was an idiot is when he told my parents he was a “meatatarian” because he eats everything. The second time was when he told me that the bumps on the side of the highway are there so that blind drivers know when they are running off the road. Ah, high school boyfriends. He was hot, though.
9. Cat Got my Tongue
I had been dating this girl for a few months and we were serious enough that I was buying her Christmas presents. I found something that had a connection to a funny event involving her cat and my cat. I made the present to be from my cat. I thought I was being cute but instead, she got angry that my cat got her a present and I didn't.
I thought she was joking. She wasn’t. To make matters worse, her parents backed her up later at a family dinner. It was incredibly awkward.
10. The Shapes Must Match
A friend didn't have coins for a vending machine, but she did have a dollar bill. She folded up the dollar bill and forced it into the coin slot, and then did not understand why she did not get her item.
11. Rock Star
I was working for a scaffolding company right after I had finished my degree, while I was still looking for a full-time job in mining engineering. One time, we came across some pyrite and one of the guys thought that it was gold. I basically explained to him that it could not have been because it was too hard, to which he replied, “What are you some kind of rock specialist?” My answer was simply a polite but firm “Yes.”
12. Orientation Matters
My wife's cousin and her husband fell on self-induced hard times and needed a place to stay for a bit. We set up a queen-sized air mattress in the living room for them. For three weeks, I woke up to go to work every morning and saw them sleeping on it sideways, with their legs hanging off the edge. One day, she asked me to buy her a bigger air mattress because the old one was hard on their backs.
I told her to turn her body the other way on the mattress - the thing even has a built-in pillow on one end, it’s pretty self-explanatory. Her response? “We can’t, because then we can't see the TV. It hadn’t even crossed her mind to turn the air mattress to face the TV! The worst part is that that is only one of many stories I have about this lady.
13. Family Tree Flub
My identical twin brother and I used to work as grocery baggers. One day, we were working at adjacent checkouts. A customer saw us, stared, and then asked if we were twins. I answered yes, and her follow-up question was mind-blowing. "Are you brothers?" We just looked at each other, slowly nodded, and then went back to bagging.
14. No Laughing Matter
I teach high school English. I was working with a small ninth-grade group and found out that all four of them thought Alaska was an island. They were not kidding. I grabbed a globe to show them that Alaska was not, in fact, an island. They were silent for a minute until one piped up with the dumbest follow-up question. He asked, "But how recent is that map?" I laughed really hard but discovered, again, that it was not a joke.
15. Foul Language
Someone in my school once tried to correct my Spanish in class. I’m Puerto Rican, but I guess my classmate was not aware of that. I just started speaking to him in full, fluent Spanish in response. He walked away.
16. What a Sap!
I’m a professional dietician. I once had a person start telling me all about how agave nectar is soooo much healthier, and how I should replace all the sugar I eat with it. I told her that it's just a fructose and glucose mix, and that you might as well just use corn syrup. She got really mad. Like irrationally mad.
17. You Think You Know Someone…
I'm a lawyer. I was defending a lady in a simple neighbor dispute. The neighbors said she went after them with a hose and threatened their kids. The case was pretty weak because my client was an old lady and she adamantly denied everything. Anyways, it’s just a small evidentiary hearing in front of the judge, so there was no discovery ahead of time or anything like that.
My client is on the stand, and I come to find out they have video footage of her. It was so much worse than I imagined. It showed her smearing dog poop on their house, printing out photos of their kids, and writing insults on them. Needless to say, my jaw dropped. The client then perjured herself on the stand—they play a video where it’s obviously her, but she repeats “that’s not me” over and over.
It was the most painful court moment of my life.
18. Yogi Bear Knows Better
I used to work in Banff National Park. One day at the end of the tour, I was driving some guests back to their hotel and a woman was adamant that Banff was clearly a very dangerous place to visit since we "just let wild animals run around everywhere! They should be in cages!" I had to fight the urge to throw her off the bus pretty hard. She also insisted that she needed to change the money she got in British Columbia to Alberta currency, which...does not exist.
19. How Can I Help You?
I'm fairly certain that people who have to work at front-of-house desks deal with so many stupid people that they start to lose their own sense of sanity. I once decided to go see my doctor about something and, as it happened, my bus home from work stopped right outside my doctor's office, so I decided to just walk in and see if I could make an appointment there and then.
The waiting room was empty, so I walked up to the woman at the desk, who asked if I had an appointment. I told her I didn't and would like to make one. She told me that I'd have to call the number, and pointed to it on the digital signboard. I asked if I could just make an appointment with her, and she again pointed out the number on the sign.
I asked whom I'd be talking to when I called that number, and she said that she would answer the phone. So I took my phone out of my pocket, looking her in the eye the whole time, and called the number. The phone on her desk started ringing. She actually said "Excuse me one second!" answered the phone, and then I had a conversation with her. On the phone. While standing right in front of her.
I asked for an appointment. She asked when I wanted it. I said that right now would be good. She said OK, took my details, and hung up. She then looked at me and said, "How can I help you?" I told her that I have an appointment and she told me to have a seat. I went and sat down while she typed some info into her computer, and then the digital sign board popped my name up, and she spoke into the her microphone to call my name, as I'm sitting there. When I went up to the desk she said, "Hello, sir. How can I help you?"
20. Well, That Blew Up in My Face
I knew a girl in high school who really wanted to breathe fire. On her first, and last, attempt, she put the lighter fluid in her mouth and, instead of blowing it onto a flame, she lit it on fire inside her mouth and then tried to blow it out. She came to school the next day with a bandage over half her face.
21. Saw It in a Movie
When I was in high school, we were reading a short story about what would have happened if the Japanese went after us after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A girl in my class raised her hand and said something along the lines of “why does this matter? None of it is real anyway.” When the teacher asked her to clarify, the girl (who’s actually half Japanese) told her that the bombings of Japan were just from a movie and didn’t actually happen.
22. Different Schools of Thought
A former co-worker was talking about how she wanted to go back to school to get her Master’s degree because she only had a "bachelorette" degree and wanted more job opportunities. I asked her, "do you mean a bachelor's degree?" She INSISTED it was pronounced bachelorette when it was given to a woman. Then she led me back to her office and pointed at her diploma to the word Baccalaureate, and said, "SEE?! Bachelorette!"
23. Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
A guy had bought some land that had a really old house on it and wanted to get rid of it; however, he eventually decided that it cost too much to have it torn down, so he asked the fire department if he could burn it down himself. They said no. A couple of weeks went by, and they got a call about a house on fire. Guess who? The guy had set the old house on fire anyway. He was promptly detained.
24. Do Not Enter
One time, I watched someone who had missed their exit on the highway stop on the shoulder, back up, turn around, and go up the entrance ramp. I could not believe my eyes. A couple of fun details about this incident really highlight its stupidity: the next exit was only a few miles up the road. Going there and then turning around might have delayed the person’s drive by 15 minutes, tops. There was also no traffic ahead.
25. Nice Try
This was my first experience in retail where I learned what many customers would be like. Seasons were changing, so we put a lot of shirts that we had to get rid of in the front and made them 50% off. I was working the register when a woman came up to buy her things. I rang her up and could see from the look on her face like something was wrong. That’s when the following happened.
Lady: “Why is this so much?” Me: “Pardon me?” Lady: “This should only be $10 not $20.” I thought that maybe her item was on sale, so I asked if she could point out the sign, because I wasn’t aware of it. It was a small store and we didn't have to walk anywhere. Lady: “This sign here.” Me: “This sign says that all shirts are 50% off.” Lady: “Yes, so why is this full price?” Me: “Ma’am, this is a hat.”
26. Got A Point
There was a kidnapping case that involved two Asian male defendants who looked the same age and looked relatively similar. The witness was on the stand to identify where the defendant who’d harmed him was seated in the courtroom. It was clear that the witness was having trouble differentiating between the two defendants.
In a moment of absolute idiocy, one defendant raised his hand and basically pointed to himself like, "I'm right here, bud." Hands down, the dumbest thing I'd ever seen. I thought his defense attorney was going to have a brain aneurysm.
27. Missing Something
I had a client who wanted to sue because there were no strawberries in her fruit salad which she got from a supermarket. A secretary was able to screen the call, thankfully. She asked if the package said it had strawberries, and the response was, "No, but I thought there would be some in there." I don't know how these people make it through life.
28. Scandinavian Skies
Some random guy tried to correct me about the geography of my own country (Norway). He was claiming that it is very much flat like all the other Nordic countries, and he refused to believe me when I told him that it’s actually the opposite and is filled with mountains. I’m pretty sure that actually living here and seeing the country with my own eyes holds just a tad more weight than simply repeating something you heard.
29. Had to Be There
I've got two little girls who were born 15 months apart. They look pretty similar, and we get asked if they're twins pretty often. Even though one is quite a bit taller, you'd be forgiven for thinking they were fraternal twins. But yeah… I once got into an argument with somebody over whether my daughters are twins or not. It wasn't until I pointed out that I was literally there watching them being birthed that they finally conceded.
30. All About Labels
I worked with a lady who was talking about how one of her friends had lost a bunch of weight. She pondered, “I wonder how many diet cokes she had to drink to do that.” This was the same lady who was convinced beyond repair that when you sneeze, the air ONLY comes out of your nose. There was no convincing her otherwise.
31. Ma’am, This Isn't Who You Think
About half the calls I take as a 9-1-1 operator on a daily basis are from people who call 9-1-1 to ask whether Walmart is open, to report that they didn't get enough mayo on their burger, to complain that the cleanup at a fatality wreck is taking "too long" and all sorts of absurd, out of touch, beyond insensitive stuff. It truly makes you lose faith in humanity.
32. French Tribal Chic
Back in college, I saw a fleur-de-lis tattoo on the girl's back for the first time. I asked her what made her decide to get that tattoo on your back? She looked at me and said, “I don’t know. I wanted something tribal.” Yes, you are now permanently linked with the ancient tribes of affluent French royalty.
33. Technical Device
One of my clients received a ticket for talking on his cell phone while driving and defended himself by saying, “Your honor, I was not using a smartphone while driving. I was actually using a flip phone.”
34. Rumor Has It
In high school, I was in an extracurricular program after school. There was one part that was pretty much all girls, including a girl I was dating. I went to all their events and helped out. I always wondered why none of the other girls or their parents talked to me. When I asked her about it, her reply was shocking. She confessed that she told all of them I was a horrible boyfriend and that I was very mean to her.
When I asked her why she told them that, she told me it was so no one else would take me away from her. I broke up with her shortly after.
35. Fake Plastic Trees
I realized I was dating an idiot when I saw her water her plastic plant. For the third time. I didn’t say anything the first two times I saw her do it as I was sort of stunned and curious. The third time she actually said, perplexed, "The water goes right through." She probably still waters it today and wonders why it doesn’t grow.
36. This Guy Sounds Like a Neanderthal
I'm majoring in archaeology. I once had a guy start talking to me about dinosaurs. I corrected him and explained that it's a fairly common misconception, but paleontology and archaeology are actually two different fields and I'm studying humans, not dinosaurs. He then doubles down and insists that I need to know about dinosaurs because "What do you do if you're digging up ruins and find a dinosaur fossil? Call a paleontologist??!!”
He smugly tells me that I'll be useless in my field if I don't know about dinosaurs, and that I had better start registering for paleontology courses as soon as possible. He left shortly after that comment. I still don't know too much about dinosaurs, and I don’t think that will change any time soon.
37. The Cow Jumped Over the Moon
My wife has a friend who studied zoology at an academic level. This friend once told me that cows can't run or jump. I grew up with them on a farm. On more than one occasion, I had to run after or away from them after they had jumped a fence. I know from experience that this zoologist is wrong. Despite what many people think, cows can actually be really fast when they want to be.
38. As Good as Gold!
I worked at a bank when mobile depositing had just become a "thing." We understood that some people would take longer to get used to it, but when we received a picture of someone’s cash, we realized that they sent a picture of their cash to us for deposit…because money is money, right? Yeah…it doesn’t work like that at all.
39. Mixed Up Hybrids
I used to work with a woman who insisted that any animal could reproduce with any other animal. She believed that sperm from any animal was the same and that DNA was irrelevant and didn’t matter. She believed this because she once saw some sickly, possibly deformed puppies and decided that they must have been half dog and half rat.
40. Is it More of a Squeal or a Clunk?
A girl I knew was complaining about her car making a weird noise. She kept bringing it to the repair shop and they kept finding that nothing was wrong with it. So she sold her car and bought another one. She complained that the same weird noise was in the new car too. Then one day she was in the car with a friend of mine, who was driving.
He veered out of the lane just a little bit and hit the rumble strip along the edge of the highway. “That’s it! That’s the noise my car makes!” The girl said excitedly. “What, this?” He purposely drove onto the rumble strip. “Yes!” She said. She sold her car because the “weird noise” it was making couldn’t be fixed. Her nickname was rumble strip after that.
41. Kid Logic
When I was a kid, I had a real old transistor radio, which I used to listen to old music. One day, I asked my parents for a newer radio—so that I could receive and listen to newer music. Not my finest hour.
42. Lost In Translation
I was working at a grocery store in the US that had a Coinstar machine. Basically, you could place all of your unwrapped change in it, and it would be converted for a small fee into a receipt that you could claim for actual cash. I was walking past and noticed a woman struggling with the machine, so I stopped to help her. Big. Mistake.
It turned out she had accidentally hit “Spanish” as a language selection. I quickly explained what she needed to do, figuring she couldn’t read Spanish. I ran through how it worked and showed her where the receipt would print out that she could turn in at customer service for the cash. She turned, looked at me and said, “but I don’t want Spanish money!”
43. Solving for X-planation
I teach 6th grade. One time a parent came to me after trying to help their child with math homework and asked, “what number is x worth? It feels like it changes with every problem!” The parent came to me after school without their child because they knew something was wrong and didn't want to look stupid in front of their kid. This is filed in my brain of parent reactions I can't fathom along with the mom that year who asked if her child could play piano in marching band.
44. Clocked Out
I worked at Little Caesars and we were proofing the dough for pizza. My boss said at 7 PM that the dough needed to rise for 12 hours and took out her calculator to do the math. So, I said, “ummm, that's gonna be 7 AM.” Then she said the dough will expire in 48 hours and started doing the math again. I told her it would expire two days from now, and she said, “that's kinda weird how that works out huh?” I quit shortly after that.
45. Sugar in the Morning, Sugar in the Evening
You wouldn’t believe the number of times people have tried to tell me that you can only become diabetic if you eat too much sugar. These people also tend to absolutely INSIST that they are right. I’m a type one diabetic, and I was diagnosed when I was just 14 months old. Was I drinking soda from my baby bottles and using ring pops as pacifiers back then?
46. Green Nuclear
Back when the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster happened, we were discussing how the reactor had failed in a science class. Five minutes into the conversation a girl piped up and said, "I don't see what the big deal is. Why can't we just regrow it?" She seriously thought a nuclear power plant was literally a biological plant.
47. Blind Privilege
There was a girl in my high school who forced the teacher to pause a documentary about people living in mud huts in Africa because she was upset that they were showing us “fictional” movies in a history class. It took everyone else in the room to convince her that people actually live like that in some places. That’s wealthy-area living for you.
48. Foreshadowing
A man's convenience store burned down. At first, it looked like a terrible accident. Then the investigators caught the owner in the biggest, dumbest mistake. He did it himself so that he could get a bunch of insurance money. They figured it out when they saw that the owner had conveniently stopped the milk and bread deliveries one day before the "accidental" fire. Buddy was not a mastermind.
49. Where’s the Connection?
When I started working from home, I had a few users submit tickets for "connectivity issues." These tickets got through two lines of support before landing in my queue. After asking a few questions, it turns out that they thought the corporate Wi-Fi would follow them home. They genuinely didn't realize that they'd need home internet in order to connect to their workplaces.
50. Right Before Your Eyes
I worked in retail for a few years, and it taught me that many people are either incapable or unwilling to read. I have had people walk up to me to ask me how much something is only for the price tag to be featured prominently on the item. It usually goes with me saying, “it's $9.99, ma'am,” which is usually followed with a very loud, “HOW DID YOU KNOW?” I finally concede with, “it says so on the price tag, ma'am.”
51. Fowl Understanding
I used to manage a retail store that sold teen clothing, so as expected, I primarily had teens working for me. One employee came to the back room while I was on break and asked what I was eating. Somehow the topic turned to how I should’ve brought chicken for lunch because she wanted chicken. I told her I was vegetarian and therefore don’t eat meat.
She tells me chicken is NOT meat. It’s “poultry,” and according to her, vegetarians can eat poultry because at the grocery store the aisles list “meat” and “poultry” separately so they’re obviously different. We argued for a couple of minutes before I finally told her to go back to the sales floor. She didn’t last at the job long, but MAN.
52. Not Really Tapping In
One of my friends showered in cold water for a year because he never thought of turning the other tap to see what it would do.
53. F for Effort
In grade ten, we had a science test, and the teacher gave one point for putting a date on the paper and one point for your name on the paper. And then there were 98 points for the rest of the test. All you had to do to get two automatic points was just your name and late. A guy sitting in front of me got 0.5/100… He didn’t write the date and only wrote his first name…
54. Soiled
My professor told my class that he was once shopping at a chain store, looking for some fertilizer. A younger employee asked if he needed any help finding something, so he told him what he was looking for and in what amounts. The employee then went on to thoroughly teach him about how those numbers are really percentages of how much elemental nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are in the mix—and the rest of the percentage missing is just filler stuff.
My professor has a PhD in soil science. The employee’s explanation was not correct, but he decided to just let it slide since he was so enthusiastic about it. He didn’t want to burst the poor guy’s bubble.
55. Multiple Misunderstandings
Someone I knew from school was pregnant, and she knew she was having identical twins. The day before the scan to find out if they were male or female, she posted on Facebook asking her friends to guess girls or boys. One friend of hers replied with, “One of each!” The mum-to-be replied, “They’re identical.” The person actually responded again with, “It could still happen!” No honey. Just no.
56. The Dangers of Sarcasm
A summer camp counselor made all the kids on a school bus keep the windows up on a hot day on an hour-long trip so that they could “feel the air conditioning" coming from the front of the bus. Thing is, she was completely wrong. Even though I was about 10 years old at the time, I tried to explain to the 40-year-old counselor that the "air conditioning" she was feeling was the wind coming in through the bus driver’s open window. She still didn't believe me.
I begged her to ask the bus driver to confirm that the bus did not have air conditioning, but she didn't want to bother him while he was driving. She finally got hot enough that she asked the bus driver if the bus had air conditioning. He jokingly replied, "The bus only has air conditioning when the windows are down and the wheels are turning." She then looked back at me and said, "See? I told you the bus had air conditioning!" and proceeded to force us to keep the windows up.
57. Tire Trouble
I once rescued a co-worker on the side of the road with a flat tire. While waiting for the tow truck, I pointed out the nail at the top of his tire, commenting that the problem was clear. He scoffed, looked at me like I was the stupidest person in the world, and exclaimed, “That’s not possible, because it’s only flat at the bottom!” I just walked away and never brought it up again.
58. Three Comes Before Four, Therefore…
In the 80's, A&W attempted to compete with McDonald's "quarter-pounder" burger by selling a "third-pounder" for the same price. The operation failed tremendously with virtually no one buying the burger. When they surveyed customers for an explanation, the majority of customers responded that they "didn't want to pay the same price for less meat." Their customers genuinely believed that one third was less than one fourth and refused to try the new A&W burger because of it.
59. Bleach Brain
I knew a kid who drank bleach to prove it wouldn’t kill you. A week later, he showed up at school after taking a shot. He said he “proved his point” when the teacher asked why he was bragging about it. Mr. Hawk just said, “but you cannot argue that without that medical treatment you’d have been a goner though. You even said you have stomach damage and a burnt esophagus yourself.” This kid was bragging about that. He was not mentally disabled or otherwise. He was just that dumb.
60. March Right Back Over Here
Our town was live streaming a holiday parade in case people weren’t able to make it out in person. This included a live chat feature as well. One mother who lived nearby wrote into the chat that her daughter didn't get outside in time and asked for them to turn around and come back to her street so she could see...????
61. Music to My Ears
A guy who considered himself to be a “music maven” tried to correct me when I mentioned something about Beethoven's “9th Symphony,” better known as "Ode to Joy." He insisted that Johann Sebastian Bach had composed it when, in fact, Bach had never composed a single symphony in his entire life—not to mention that “Ode to Joy” is one of Beethoven's most famous pieces!
62. Sounds Like Intelligence Skipped a Generation!
I'm an identical twin, and a big biology nerd on the side. I had someone once try to insist to me that fraternal twins are actually called "paternal" twins. The reason that she claimed to know this better than me was that she expects to give birth to twins at some point in her life, due to the fact that her husband’s father has a twin and she had heard that twinness apparently skips a generation.
I have no clue where on earth she’s getting her information from, but she may want to consider glancing through an actual science textbook instead some time...
63. King Of The Hill
A guy found a rock in the middle of Melbourne that he believed came from an underground volcano. Because of this, he therefore believed that he had discovered the volcano and owned the volcano and that the Melbourne city council as well as the Victorian government should pay him rent to live on top of his underground volcano.
64. Consider the Lobster
I was a cook a few years ago. On a particularly busy night, we ran out of lobster mac and cheese. This one waitress could not understand how this was possible and just kept nagging and nagging in disbelief. I got annoyed to the point that I told her the reason for this was that there was a shortage of people with small enough hands to milk lobsters’ tiny nipples, hence a worldwide shortage of lobster milk to make that dish. I had to come clean with her when she started telling this to customers and they demanded to speak with a manager.
65. The Manhattan Theory
My former boss was worried that the island of Manhattan would sink with all the extra visitors for New Years and the ball dropping. She thought islands float, and when she found out that wasn’t true, she thought it was so funny that she told everyone the story. She was later fired for withholding a pay raise from someone on her team because he didn’t accept her advances. He had the texts to prove it.
66. Two for Dumb
I remember once, this dumb guy that I knew from middle school put money into the vending machine, and then his item didn’t come out. So then, to try and get it out, he put MORE MONEY into the machine, and then two of what he wanted dropped to the bottom. He pulled out his items and then exclaimed, “All right! 2 for 1!” Oh buddy, do I have news for you.
67. The Lie Detector Test Results Revealed That…
One time, my now ex-girlfriend and I were watching Maury Povich and it was one of those paternity test episodes with the classic "you are NOT the father!" moments. As the episode ends, she turns to me and says the dumbest thing I've ever heard: "if we ever have a baby and I found out I'm not the mother, I'll kill you." Thankfully, we didn't end up reproducing.
68. Poor Breathing Techniques
When one of my nieces had a cold as a toddler, she was breathing through her mouth. But then for some reason, my ex-brother-in-law flipped out because he didn't want her to get carbon monoxide from breathing through her mouth because he believed that was the wrong way instead of her nose, which was the "safe" way... ????
69. Mind Over Matter
My girlfriend and I were 16 at the time and were going to “do it,” however I realized I didn't have any condoms. I was surprised when she told me I didn't need one. She said, "I trust my body not to get pregnant." I asked her what she was talking about. She told me it takes a conscious effort to become pregnant and if she didn't want to be she would never conceive.
I kept my virginity for a while after hearing that.
70. It Comes And Goes
My father is a judge and had a case where a woman was suing for a severe back injury that she said was preventing her from working and taking care of her kids and so on. In the middle of the trial, a pen rolled off the table, and she bent over trying to reach it from her chair, but the pen was too far, so she stood up.
Then she bent over, picked it up, and walked back to her seat as if nothing was out of the ordinary. My dad was just looking at her, and she snapped at him and asked what he was staring at. My dad asked her if she was okay, and her response was that she was fine. Her attorney leaned over and whispered something to her.
Then she loudly started complaining about her back and how much her back hurt, but no one believed her.
71. Shades of Grey
My girlfriend insisted that the past was black and white. She was serious. I don’t even know what she meant. How do you argue with that?
72. No Hope Here
This guy I was dating shot himself in the leg while cleaning his 9mm. Twice. The first time, he accidentally shot himself in the calf. I guess he really didn’t learn his lesson that it’s a bad idea to clean a loaded weapon, because two weeks later he took out his knee cap. It took months of surgeries to fix his leg. Not sure anything could be done to fix his brain, though.
73. Animal Instincts
There was this one girl who was probably one of the funniest people I've dated but definitely wasn't too sharp. We were at a restaurant one evening and she saw a picture of a buffalo and said, "I wanna eat that pig." I almost fell over laughing.
74. Begging for Mercy
We were loading groceries into the car when a shady looking guy comes walking up asking for money. I put myself between him and my girlfriend and politely tell him that I'm sorry, I don't have any cash and can't help him today. We watched him start to walk away. We turn and get into the car. The second my back was turned, the shady man returned and said to my girlfriend, "Miss? What about you?"
To which she responds, "I'm sorry. All I have are twenties."
75. Wasn’t Written in the Stars
We were laying out under the stars and he asked why some stars were brighter and others were dimmer. I told him that they were different sizes, brightnesses, and distances away. There was confused silence. He said, "You mean, they're not stuck up there?" I'm lying there thinking, “This can't be true.” But oh yes, it was.
Upon further questioning, I found that he believed the night sky was a big dark blanket-like thing with stars stuck on it. The fact that our sun was a star, too also blew his mind. I was crushed. I almost broke up with him there and then. But he was very earnest and wanted me to "teach him." So I tried. Two years and a whole lotta stupid later, we broke up.
76. What SIDS You Say?
When my daughter was born, we had to see the hospital pediatrician who was an older southern man before we could switch to our usual one. We're in a tiny exam room and he's going over the do’s and don'ts for new parents. So, he asks us, “And I assume she will be sleeping in a crib in the nursery?” We respond by saying, “We have a bassinet set up beside the bed to make night feeding easier.”
Then he interjects and says, “She can't sleep with you!” But we tell him that, “She won't be in the bed. She has a bassinet beside the bed.” He says to this, “If she sleeps in the same room, there will be too much carbon dioxide and she'll suffocate. That's what causes SIDS.” After a short pause, we say, “...then isn’t this exam room unsafe?” We later put in a complaint with the practice and the hospital. That's some ridiculously incorrect information to be spouting off at people, especially parents who take everything a doctor says as gospel. I can't even find the logic in that.
77. Hamlet Gone Wrong
I didn’t specialize in this per se, but when I worked at the deli counter in my local grocery store, I had a guy once come in and ask for some sliced ham. I asked him if he wanted Black Forest ham, honey baked, or mesquite ham. He looked at me with an obnoxious smirk on his face, and said “It’s not mesquite, it’s mestique!”
When he didn’t believe me that he may be wrong about this, I literally pointed at the sign and label on the actual freaking ham itself to show him that it did, indeed, say “Mesquite.” Nevertheless, he still continued to correct me. I finally gave up and just gave him his darn “mestique ham.” This was a good 15 years ago, and I’m still mad about it!
78. Dress For The Job You Want
This was a moving company, in the mid-west. Most people didn’t make it through the first week, as they will hire literally anyone who can pass a substance test. Turnover was really bad, but I guess that’s the nature of the job. Still, I'll never forget Jeremy. Jeremy was 18 and did not apply for colleges, so his parents made him get a job.
He was hired as a mover, as is everyone. He shows up the first day to roll-call in a full suit and tie asking where his desk is. This was a group full of former convicts, high school dropouts, and generally rough dudes trying to make a living. We laughed so hard. Jeremy went right back home. Next day, Jeremy's mom shows up to give the manager a piece of her mind. We laughed even harder.
79. Are You for Real?
My boyfriend and I were driving around this weird part of Las Vegas. Mesmerized by the lights, casinos, and Elvis impersonators, I said, "This is surreal." He said, "I know. It's so real." Startled and a bit curious, I repeated, "Surreal." He repeated, "So. Real." Exact opposite.
80. Momma’s Not Always Right
My friend in college once lamented, “Ugh. I have to pee and I just put a fem product in like five minutes ago." I was confused, but Her next words made my jaw drop. "I hate having to pull them out dry. Also, it’s such a waste.” Yep.
81. Hands Off
My friend was representing a guy with a lengthy record. This guy took an A/C unit and threw it at his girlfriend. My buddy got him a plea deal for one year of probation without any time served. The judge was all ready to accept the deal. When he asked if he had anything to say, this defendant said he did want to say something.
“Yea. I don’t know why they charging me. I never touched her. I just threw an A/C at her. This is garbage.” The judge rescinded the plea deal because of the defendant’s attitude and lack of remorse. He went to trial and was locked up for a year. Such an idiot.
82. Where in the World?
I was helping my girlfriend one night with her geography homework. I knew I was dating an idiot when I asked her to point out our own country on a map. She couldn’t find it.
83. Kinda Spacey
I knew it wasn’t going to work out when she pointed up at a bluish star and sincerely asked, "Is that Earth?"
84. Mechanical Errors
I'm a Harley Davidson mechanic and, I swear, almost all Harley riders seem to feel some kind of intense need to pretend that they know everything there is to know about their bike at all times, even when they clearly don’t! Believe me, it can get really annoying. I don’t even argue with them anymore, I just tell ‘em what's up. If they want to debate me about it, I just say "ok" and walk away.
85. A Word to the (Un)Wise
My girlfriend and I were playing the word game Madlibs. It was her turn and she asked "What is a noun?" I said, "It's a person, place, or thing." There was a long silence as she thought. It went on for so long that I thought she must be thinking of the best noun I had ever heard. Then she said, "Place."
86. Think Like The Enemy
I acted for a member of a vigilante group. My client was charged with various offenses relating to his vigilantism, but most seriously, causing grievous bodily harm with intent. He wanted to fight the case on a public interest defense point that wasn’t available to him in statute or at common law contrary to my advice.
I followed his instructions. "If the state won't punish these people properly, then it's left to men like my client to take the law into their own hands!" A garbage argument for a whole host of reasons. His laptop was submitted for forensic examination where they found his staggeringly huge database of illicit content. Yeah, the high road didn't work out so well for him...
87. Historic Fail
I was dating this girl who was very cute and super sweet. We were watching another roommate play Call of Duty—it was still new at the time. She asked if the video game was based on a true story. We told her the game was based on WWII. She said, “What's that?” I told her she was pretty ignorant for now knowing about the time the entire world was in battle.
Her defense? “It’s not like everyone knows about it!” Well, the whole world kinda knows about it.
88. Mixed Signals
I knew the guy I was dating was an idiot when we had this argument over colors. He seriously tried to convince me that the color orange didn't exist because it was really just pink and red mixed together. Agree to disagree? My Cheezies say otherwise.
89. You’re (Not) My North Star
My girlfriend and I were on a hike on a trail I had researched online. We get to a fork in the trail and I say, "Now we need to go north." She replied, "Haven't we been going north this whole time?" Confused, I look at her and ask why she said that. She replied, "North is the direction in front of you yeah?" Still not entirely sure about the origins of that logic. Our paths soon diverged.
90. Honesty Isn’t The Best Policy
When I was 18, I got a job at a grocery store along with three others, and we all started training together. On the first day, we were training in the evening, and one girl asked to go home because she said her head hurt. They said fine and she wandered off and clocked out. Then we watched her do something supremely stupid.
She went to grab a grocery cart and started filling it with bottles. The store manager walked over and asked her if she was having a party. She said yes. Didn't even try to come up with an excuse. Just, "Yeah, I am, so I needed to leave early on my first day." Well, he fired her.
91. The Doctor Is In
As a lawyer, one of the most annoying things I've had happen was, after an hour-long consultation with an older couple about changing the husband's will, the wife hands me a letter from his doctor. When I read it, I wanted to scream. It says the husband has dementia and does not have the capacity to sign medical documents. Like, you didn't think that was a good place to start?
92. High Horsepower
A woman I know received several hefty speeding fines. In my country, you can have a magistrate reduce your fines if you plead poverty. She heard about this and decided to give it a try, and she went to court and told the magistrate a story about not having enough money. The magistrate took the time to hear her out. He then asked her, "Madam, what type of car do you drive?"
She replied in a tiny voice," a Porsche." Brilliant...
93. Tight Squeeze
I had a guy who wanted to bring a class action against the company that made his underwear. His reason for doing this was truly outrageous. He was convinced that his underwear was the reason that he had crooked junk. He assured us that as soon as the jury saw his junk, they would side with him. No, we didn't take the case.
94. Attack Of The Colors
In my sophomore year of high school, our old principal got a promotion to the district office. He was replaced by someone who had literally just moved to the area and knew next to nothing of the well-established culture of our small town. After a few weeks, he noticed a "problem" around the campus. This is where the fun starts.
He saw many people wearing purple and gold in copious amounts, often in ridiculous ways every Friday, and he was sure it had to be related to gang involvement. Rather than ask anyone about it, he called an "emergency assembly" in which he lectured us all about the seriousness of this issue.
He informed us that, from that point on, if anyone were to wear either of these colors at school, they would be put in detention for the remainder of the day, and their parent or guardian would have to come to pick them up. People laughed and rebelled, wearing more purple and gold on more days, and the detention room was overflowing almost every day.
Two months later, he found out that purple and gold were our school colors. People were dressing up like that on Fridays to show support and pride for whatever sports team had a game that day, as was the tradition of our town for the past 60 years or so. To show how stupid he felt, he called another emergency assembly to apologize, to which he wore a purple and gold clown suit and a dunce cap.
95. A Civil Conversation
I once had a friend of a friend start to explain the causes and effects of the American Civil War to me at a backyard party. I kept trying to take part in the conversation, and he kept interrupting me. Finally, our mutual friend, overhearing our “conversation” (AKA this guy's lecture), leans in and says, "You know she got her grad degree in this subject, right?"
I'd love to say that learning about my credentials, so to speak, changed the tone or course of our conversation, but it didn't. Somehow, it only intensified his need to explain things to me that I can literally teach a high-level class on. Classic.
96. How Do You Like Them Apples?
I asked my boyfriend if he wanted an apple. He said yes, so I pulled one out of the fridge and handed it to him. He looked confused. I asked him what was wrong…his answer still stuns me to this day. He asked me to slice it for him. He'd never eaten an apple whole before. He wasn't sure how to bite into it. He was 27.
97. Clean and Clear and Out of Control
In the late 90s, I had a co-worker who complained about her computer being slow. I took a look, and the hard drive was full. The largest folder was her recycle bin. She had never, ever emptied it in years of use. I emptied the recycle, cleared the Temp folder, and the PC started working fine. She was happy until...her big Excel tracking sheet was gone. Oh, No!
She did not know where it was on file explorer, so I asked her to show me how she opened it. She goes to the little storage container on her desktop, named...Recycle Bin. It was normally at the top, but now it's gone. No backup. Oops...She cried to management that I "destroyed her computer." The manager laughed when I told her the truth.
98. At Least She Greased
One time, my roommate decided to make brownies from a box. The box instructions say “grease the bottom of an 8x8 pan before pouring in the brownie batter.” I couldn't believe what she did. She picked up the 8x8 pan, flipped it over, greased the BOTTOM of it, and then flipped it back over and poured in the brownie batter.