2 posts tagged “stupid”
What the heck were they thinking with this one?
I took an IQ test on Friday and I got these results:
Congratulations, Gary!
Your IQ score is 138
Your Intellectual Type is Visionary Philosopher. This means you are highly intelligent and have a powerful mix of skills and insight that can be applied in a variety of different ways. Like Plato, your exceptional math and verbal skills make you very adept at explaining things to others — and at anticipating and predicting patterns.
I make those last words bold because they couldn't be any further off. I'm pretty pathetic at both anticipating and predicting patterns. Let's rewind about six years ago or so. I had a delivery to make to Riverdale Md. for my work.
I was just learning things at my job, and in this case I was riding with the regular delivery driver. Under normal circumstances, I would look up where I was going on a map. But hey, this time I don't need to because I've driven by Riverdale Baptist a hundred times. Since I told him I knew where I was going, the delivery man gladly let me drive to "Riverdale". When I arrived, he was quite giddy to tell me that we were nowhere near where we needed to be. I guess Riverdale Baptist had relocated at some point, and the actual town of Riverdale was quite a bit away.
Now let's rewind back to last Friday. I'm "planning" a trip to Lynchburg/Martinsville Virginia where I'm to meet up with some friends that had left earlier. Martinsville is my ultimate destination because I'm going to the NASCAR race, but getting a hotel room near there is impossible, so my friends rented a couple of rooms in Lynchburg, about an hour and a half away from Martinsville. My friends were going to be in Martinsville during the day on Saturday, but had planned on being back by the time I would have arrived in Lynchburg. When I last spoke to my friend, Don, he told me that his reservations were at the Holliday Inn Select. What I heard was, "We're staying at the mainstream Hotel not named Best Western or Super 8 and it doesn't matter anyway because I'll beep them on the phone when I get there". I wasn't worried anyway, because I had been to Lynchburg and knew there wasn't a ton of hotels.
Well I pulled up on Lynchburg, and it was just how I remembered it from a few years ago. There's Liberty's campus, there's the hotel I stayed at, and there's the dollar theater. Perfect! All I had to do is find the mainstream hotel not named Best Western or Super Eight and I'm golden, but before that I'll beep my buddy, Rich, on his Nextel to eliminate any guess work. Well Rich didn't answer his phone, and the phone I had with me was only good for direct connect, so I couldn't make any outgoing phone calls to reach Don on his cell phone. This wasn't giving me a peaceful easy feeling, but I wasn't worried, there aren't that many hotels that fit the criteria. The first hotel I drove by was a Sleep Inn. I gave the parking lot a quick scan for any vehicles that I recognized, no luck. Then I drove by a couple of more hotels, no luck.
I then stopped by a Days Inn. no luck again, but I went inside and talked to the lady inside. No reservations by those names, but she let me use the phone to try calling Don. I tried his phone twice and no luck. So off to the next hotel. I believe it was a Holliday Inn Express. No luck again, but this time the lady offers to call all of the surrounding hotels to see if she could find my friends. She had a list of eight hotels and was kind enough to call them all. Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope Nope. At this point I was getting a little freaked out. My friends who are supposed to be in Lynchburg were not answering their phone and no hotel had reservations for them.
About an hour goes by and I find myself at a convenience store on the corner, and at this point I was feeling like a full blown vagrant. I had no where to go, and no way to contact my friends. The pay phones wouldn't let me dial Don's cell phone number, because it was long distance. I even stooped so low as to ask a man in the store(with a Liberty University shirt on) if he would let me borrow his cell phone to make a call to my friends I'm trying to find. He looked at me and said, "Umm, yeah, I would but, umm my battery is low and I have to go to my car now and charge it." A regular good Samaritan he was.
So I went back outside the store and tried the phones one more time and... No luck. I turned around and what did I see? A van full of mid-twenties hoodlums. A guy pops out, curses a few times and went inside the store. While I was standing there trying to figure out why there would be a van full of hostile shirtless twenty somethings driving the streets of a Christian college town, the driver of the van points at me and waives me over. I thought I was standing there looking confused and exasperated, but apparently I was looking like Lynchburg's friendly local guide to all things alcoholic. Because he asked me, "Hey pal, where's the nearest liquor store?", another guy in the van asks, "And where are the Ladies?" To both I said, "Buddy, I have no Idea." The driver said, "Dude, I don't know about this town" and one of the other guys chimes in, "Yeah man, this town is kinda screwy." I'm not sure why, but I nodded in agreement. I then asked him what brought him to this screwy town. My guess was he was there to visit a friend who's parents made him go to Liberty. I was wrong, they were roofers from Ohio(that was my second guess). Apparently, they are contracted to work on certain commercial buildings, and where those buildings are, they go. They were done for the night, and wanted to get some booze to take to their hotel. I explained my situation to him, and he said to one of his friends, "Dude, let him use your cell". I use his phone to call Don and whadayaknow, he answered. It turns out Don was running late, and was just leaving the track. He informs me, again, that the hotel was the Holliday Inn Select. The roofing hoodlums inform me that's where they are staying too! Great...
I went back inside the convenience store and asked them where the Holliday Inn Select was. It was in old town Lynchburg. Old town Lynchburg???? I had done it again. I assumed I knew the whole town, but I only knew the part of the town that I had seen. Lynchburg was way bigger than what I had seen before, and I really didn't have any idea as to where I was going even though I was sure I did. Does anyone see a pattern forming?
*Hopefully tomorrow I'll finish up my story about my trip, from the T-room mutants, to the reoccurring run-ins with the roofing hoodlums.
