stupid

three ways i am stupid

1. games. we like games, we especially like catan but also i am quite partial to alhambra. transamerica was our gateway game. we don't play as much as we used to but we still play. all these modern games. when my parents came to visit i told my dad, "if you would like to buy us an awesome hostess gift..." (see how we are polite, my family, with the hostess gifts, but how i am also a tactless cow who says what she wants her gift to be? what can i say, we were in the store looking at the box and i was overcome) ANYWAY, i tell my dad, "...buy us 'risk'." dude, risk is hard. i don't mean risk is hard to figure out, i mean it is very hard to sit for six hours watching yourself getting slowly and certainly removed from the board. six hours of my life that i will never get back, the last hour of which was just watching the other three battle it out, as i was already off the board.

so i am stupid in that a) i asked for risk; b) i suck at risk; and c) i want to play again.

2. i didn't vote. i thought you had until tuesday to mail it, so i thought i would wait until my parents were gone to finally sit down with my two kilos of decision making. i usually decide on the basis of what's important to me, rather than on party lines, so sometimes it takes me a while, but i thought i could get it done on sunday and off by monday, a day before the deadline. SADLY, absentee ballots need to ARRIVE before the election day. so, whoops. i resign my right to complain for two years. i suck. i don't think my vote would have swung things in my state, but i feel pretty crappy anyway; it's the first election i've missed in 20 years i think; that includes the year when i knew so little about so many of the issues that i voted largely on the basis of which statement had the fewest grammatical errors, rationalizing that attention to detail was probably just as important as anything else.

so i am stupid in that a) i didn't vote. there's nothing more to it.

3. i've given up thinking i'm always right and i thought somehow that when i gave it up it would all be easy. i thought that if i was willing to accept that some people were just different from me, and that the choices and opinions they had that would be bad or wrong for me didn't make the people holding those opinions bad or wrong that it would be over. i thought that somehow when i didn't want to argue in order to win anymore that i wouldn't have to argue to defend myself either. i do the wan smile and the yes-i'm-sure-that's-best-for-you but somehow that's not enough. i am not stupid for not wanting to fight (and i've learned some things by just listening instead of arranging my arguments in tidy formation for the slaughter), and i don't think i am stupid for smiling til my teeth itch instead of rearing up and screaming you are so wrong, you stupid waterbag of brainwashed idiotic thoughtlessness, not only do i not agree but i would rather cut off my thumbs than... i think i am stupid for having thought that my lack of interest in confrontation would mean i wouldn't have to be confronted.

so i am stupid in that i thought not voicing the screams in my head would quiet them, when instead it just turned them into a constant stream of static, no less loud and not much less irritating.

that's all, i think. other than that? perfect. seriously.

Comments

[munky]

we will have to play risk when you both are out here again. :-)

[ozma]

Wow! Only three ways is quite impressive. None of those are too bad either. I think you are lucky to like games. What are you supposed to do with those six hours anyway? Is there an amazing thing we do with time? Work is all and the only thing that I will count as worth the time but there's something very American and sick about that.

[Aaron]

1 a is not stupid on its own. Risk is fun, especially when you spend the 6 hours beating everyone else up.

1 b and c kind of cancel each other out. I mean, if you suck at risk, then shouldn't you want to play more to get better?

2 is just really stupid. I don't think you're allowed to complain about other people not voting (cough) for like 8 years. Yeah. 8 years.

3 isn't necessarily stupid, it's just hard to know what will happen when you're quiet.

So, really only one stupid thing. Well, that plus the new color-scheme . . .

[Madeleine]

1. Never did like Risk. Now Ruckus (http://www.mudpuddletoys.com/catalog_i5726821.html) is a good game. Less than 4 minutes per hand. And I don't have to take a handicap for the six year old to win sometimes. Bonus: math pratice adding up the scores.

2. Me too. But my previous home jurisdiction is pretty solid.

3. I've been thinking I need to learn that lesson. But now you tell me it won't really help. I'm torn. What I hate most is that feeling that I am 2/3 of the way through an arguement, and now I can't stop, but if I had just cut it off to start with life would be easier.