Part I of the Stupidity Mini-Series

(Picture will be explained in Part III)

I am well-versed in the art of stupidity. If there were an Olympic event for idiocy...I would regularly bring home the gold. Not to brag...but I am the Michael Phelps of foolishness. The Simone Biles of brainless maneuvers. When someone tells me that they did "An Amy," I cringe because, nine-times-out-of-ten, it is NOT a good thing.

But this week, I managed to rocket right off the stupid scale into stratospheric insanity. There was just no stopping me as I manned the half-witted helm screaming, "Ludicrous speed, Colonel Sandurz!"  As a side-note, perhaps adjusting my movie-watching predilections from such slap-stick humor as Spaceballs to something more intellectually mind-elevating such as...ugh...I can't even think of one. Is Jane Austin a character or an author? Is it a movie about a book about an author? Wasn't she cast in "Doctor Quinn, Medicine Woman?" Look! I'm expanding my mind already...oh no! I've gone PLAID!

Any-hoo...Part I of this Stupidity Mini-Series begins with lunch. All morning long, as I navigated educational paths through plural possessives ("I don't know where to put my apostrophe," yet another scholar whined for the fiftieth time in ten minutes. I gazed ceiling-ward...stoically refraining from telling them exactly WHERE I want them to place the apostrophe.), I yearned for lunch. Bleu cheese blended with horseradish mashed potatoes. As we bridged the complex structure of double-digit multiplication by times-ing by ten ("I'm not sure how many zeroes to add to the end of my product," I was told, again and again. "How many zeroes are in ten?" I coaxed gently, in the soft, calm, reassuring manner of a SWAT team member addressing a villain with a thumb on the detonator. Meanwhile, in my mind, I was exploding, "ADD A ZERO! A ZERO! ZE-RO!"), I longed for lunch. Pork tenderloin with a balsamic vinegar reduction glaze. We finally reached the Hudson River, where we tried to discover why, geographically-speaking, it wasn't likely that Henry Hudson would succeed in his endeavor to find the Northwest Passage. "What direction must you travel to get from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific, cherubs?" I asked. "East to West!" they shouted. I smiled, pleased. "Good! Now...which direction does the Hudson River run? "Up and down!" they answered excitedly. Sigh. I glanced at the clock. Thank God. Lunch.

I power-walked my kids to lunch, shoved them into the cafeteria, and rushed to the elementary faculty room; diving headfirst into the refrigerator. I tossed my tupperware into a waiting micro-wave, punched in the heating time, and then obnoxiously talked about my delicious meal for three minutes and thirty seconds. BING! I fairly danced with happiness. I popped the top and then stared at the contents, confused. Why were there strawberries where my balsamic vinegar reduction glaze should be? What was that white stuff? It had the wrong consistency to be my bleu cheese blended with horseradish mashed potatoes. It was...foamy...almost...milky. I gasped in horror. The faculty room was struck silent as everyone took in my bright red features. "I killed someone's lunch!" I cried. In its former glory, it had been a meticulously-layered concoction of granola, yogurt, and strawberries but now it was a batch of inedible slop. My friends in the faculty room supported me by laughing hysterically as I raced up and down the halls of the school (Envision Abe Lincoln scouring the countryside for the owner of a lost coin), attempting, to no avail, to find the owner of the murdered meal. I ended up taping blood money to the top accompanied by a heartfelt postie-note.

The owner turned out to be a kind and gracious woman named Michelle (not the Michelle that makes gross protein shakes and judges me...a KIND Michelle) who valiantly attempted to return the money. "Everyone makes mistakes," she told me, as her poor empty tummy grumbled hungrily. She waved the money at me. "All those containers look alike," she insisted, holding onto her clear, round receptacle. I discreetly hid my square, green dish and begged her to keep the cash to assuage my guilt. "Did it even occur to you to give her your meal?" my husband asked later. Ashamed, I shook my head. This whole thing had just been a recipe for disaster. But little did I know...it was JUST the beginning.