#121 Zero Clue

I gotta admit, sometimes I have no clue about human beings. Or, to use the common parlance, I have zero clue. The other day as I was leaving work I spied this truck across the street. It was one of those big panel trucks, the kind that function great as mobile billboards. The painting on the truck said: Home Oxygen services, Home Respiratory Aid and Respiratory Therapy. I envisioned seniors sitting in wheelchairs with oxygen tubes sticking in their noses. The driver got out of the truck, went around to the front, glanced at his watch, then reached into his front shirt pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes, shook one out and proceeded to fire up.
I wondered how many people in a given day he saw suffering from the ravages of lung cancer and emphysema. Then wondered again at the ability of the human mind to justify a given habit with the simple phrase, it won’t happen to me.
When I was at the Clark County Fair it was kind of interesting. There were people of all shapes and sizes. Fairs tend to bring out a wide sampling of humanity. Some of which also appeared to have zero clue. At the food barn there was a booth selling German sandwiches of some sort. They look like some kind of pita folded over big chunks of meat. The booth had a name, presumably of the family that owned it. It was a German name and it was spelled d-o-n-e-r. But it was written kind of frilly and there was one of those tipped over colon things over the “O” which I believe is called an umlaut. The overall effect made you read the first syllable of the name not as done but as don. Needless to say, the sign Donner family foods seemed a little, shall we say, unappetizing, to history buffs like myself. Um, do you have a salad?
Later, at the concert, they had the head of the fair make some announcements before Styx came on. One that indicated that maybe he had zero clue was when he thanked everybody for showing up for the breakfast that morning. Response, the guy said incredulously, was overwhelming. They even had to cut the line off at eleven o’clock, the first time they’d ever had to do that for this free event. Thanks again for your support. Hell yes. I’ll support lots of things if it doesn’t cost anything and I get a free breakfast out of the deal. I’m surprised he was so surprised. Maybe next year he can change the fair’s theme to: “We Put the Moo in Mooch.”
During the Styx concert, some avid fans—female—started throwing things up on stage. They were panties. As the band members retrieved them, they would then toss guitar picks in the general direction of the panty providers. Occasionally, the panty person would emerge from the scuffle for the not-so-accurately-thrown-pick victorious, and it’s no secret they squealed with delight at being so honored by the band. No offense, but what are panties going for these days? I have zero clue. But I would imagine even a used pair could fetch more than a guitar pick. Look what I got on eBay honey...
America, ya gotta love it.