The best day of Cara’s life was the day she called into a radio station and did an impression of a wolf howling to win tickets to the upcoming monster truck rally. The second best day was the day we drove down to the local amphitheater and saw the show. The parking lot was completely filled with inbred rednecks yelling “GIT-R-DONE” that wore trucker hats and sleeveless american flag shirts and drove lifted pickup trucks with a gun rack and their lucky pair of elk testicles hanging from the rear differential. What the fuck are these people trying to accomplish with the swinging pair of plastic balls with veins bulging out of them? Aside from a disturbing homo-erotic fascination with balls, I can’t think of any reason why it would be so important to them for me to know that their truck is of the MALE GENDER and produces SPERM. I get it, your truck could fuck the shit out of me if it wanted to. I highly doubt you’ve gotten many people giving you the “thumbs-up” at the red light, and I know for a fact no girls have ever dropped down to their knees and started sucking on them, so is it worth the giant Las Vegas style neon sign with an arrow pointing to your truck that says, “I’m a complete jackass”? Do the cops not have enough arbitrary reasons to pull you over and write you a ticket?
Politicians recently have been trying to pass legislation banning truck nuts from the roads. You could save a lot of taxpayer money if you just carpet bomb every monster truck rally for the next month; you’d never see truck nuts again. We showed up over an hour early to make sure we got to our seats in time. We were a small speck in a river of cowboy hats and loud country music that’s current flowed along the outline of the large field where the event would take place and eventually to the bleachers. It was a slow, zombie like pace, but 1500 zombies moving in one direction aren’t easily thwarted. A couple rows in front of us, two rednecks were in eachother’s faces arguing because one of them thought the other one stole their can of Copenhagen. The other one called the accusor a “Mountain Folk” and got punched in the face.
A few women screamed, but it was essentially over after that and the guy that got punched just fell on the ground and layed in the way of everyone trying to get to the bleachers. The inertia of the river kept moving, and when the people in front felt the crowd pushing against their backs, they channeled five feet or so over to the right, slightly onto the field, to avoid trampling the guy. Cara went insane. She pointed to the sign that was hanging on the stacks of tires and bales of hay that lined the field that said “Spectators are to remain off the field at all times!”
“YOU CAN’T GO ON THE FIELD! YOU CAN’T GO ON THE FIELD! YOU CAN’T GO ON THE FIELD!”
she frantically pointed and waved and screamed at the criminals that dared to break the sacred rule.
This is a hallmark of a stupid person. Stupid people don’t understand rules.
You park your car with the intentions of taking your girlfriend out for ice cream at the parlor located directly across the street. You notice that there are absolutely no cars or people and that the nearest crosswalk is a half-mile down the road. You look left; then you look right; then you look left again and the road is so devoid of cars that you can actually see the earth curving at the horizon and a tumbleweed blowing across the road. This is the overweight meter maid cop riding a segway in a neon green reflective vest that is in a perpetual dick-measuring contest with his former self that cites you for jaywalking.
Your coworker forgets their apron and asks to borrow one of the many you’ve hoarded in your locker. During their shift, they spill bleach all over it, and reimburse you the eight dollars you initially paid the company for it. This is the narcissistic ex-cashier turned supervisor that wears khaki pants and sketchers and always sweats a little too much. You walk into the perfectly good broom closet they converted into his office to make him feel important, and it feels like you’re trapped in a snowglobe as a torrential downpour of dandruff rains on his shoulders and the wood veneer Ikea desk as he explains to you that he doesn’t want to write you up, but TECHNICALLY you broke the policy of privately selling company uniforms.
Stupid people focus on the letter of the law, rather than the spirit of the law.
A decent-sized chunk of stupid people use it as a mental crutch; when you’re born with a bowl of frothy human excrement in the place of your brain, interpreting rules subjectively isn't your strong suit.
I think the rest of them have managed to convince themselves that if they strictly enforce the rules, they are altruistic and virtuous. Nothing is getting past these genius hall monitors. They've memorized the policies and procedures manual and under the guise of justice will cite the exact article and section of every rule you’ve “technically” broken, until everyone bands together and crowd surfs them into the trash compactor. The purpose of rules is of no concern to them; impeding progress is of no concern to them; they just use it to feel like they are a good person.
These people are incredibly similar to a religious person acting out the word of God. If the only thing that is stopping you from committing violent crimes is the fear that God will banish you to Hell for all of eternity, are you really a good person? If God’s wrath is the only thing preventing you from lighting your cock on fire and anally raping your cat, are you a good person?
And am I the only one slightly unnerved by the idea that many people claim to speak or communicate with God in their heads and also use him as a moral compass? So, if for some reason this voice in your head told you to disembowel me with a shovel; so what if you have a moral code you subscribe to that pragmatically denounces it, that’s a direct order from eagle one. These people need to be institutionalized.
Rules and laws are put in place because when they are broken they hurt people. You can realistically conclude that if there is a law on the books, it was enacted because someone was slighted in some fashion and having a law in place would deter a certain outcome. When a law prohibits a behavior, people that have more than a double digit IQ consider what outcome the law is trying to prevent, and if it doesn’t apply to them, they move on with their lives.
One purpose of laws and rules is to carry out the will of the people. People don’t care about someone going 63 mph in a 60 mph zone; people don’t care about someone rolling through a four-way stop at two in the morning; people don’t care about someone loaning their coworker an apron. Great responsibility is vested in the enforcers of the will of the people, and the people would rather they focus on issues of substance. How about instead of hiding behind a billboard with a radar gun you stop the gang members from graffitiing the billboard? How about instead of busting jaywalkers you bust down the door of the meth lab next to the elementary school? We need to focus on the purpose of rules and why they are enacted, not just the fact that they exist. It will allow us to expend calories in ways that nurture the betterment of society, not just run on a treadmill of stupidity. Yeah, it’s true, rules are rules…but mom’s basement is mom’s basement, and you’re going to be there for a long time with that kind of mindset.
My ears were ringing for days from the engines of the monster trucks, but at least it partially covered the country music my dad blared in the two hours we spent in the parking lot trying to leave. It drowned out the sound of my dad and Cara yammering about the monster truck world on the ride home and on the walk into the house. I laid there in my bed, in the weird state between asleep and awake, happily having a quasi-dream about living by myself and then sadly waking to find that it wasn’t real. I was harshly forced awake by a loud crash and whistles coming from our large dirt driveway. I looked out my window and saw Cara and my dad re-stacking up the beer cans so that they could crush them with their car again.
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