Duh Moments

My WonderHubby and I were discussing our DUH MOMENTS this morning. You know, those moments in time when you are being so incredibly stupid and don't realize it and when you finally do, you feel like you should be whacked in the head with a heavy object?? Not heavy enough to kill you, but heavy enough to knock the stupidity out of you. If you're REALLY lucky, you can manage to not have any witnesses to the DUH MOMENT. But, generally, there's at least one person present who will see or hear it, get hysterical and will never EVER let you forget that it happened.

WH and I had a united DUH MOMENT, fortunately with no witnesses. So, of course, what am I going to do about that?? Blog about it, what else? I figure revealing to everyone at once is better than telling one person at a time, right?

We lived in a little town approximately an hour away from my parents and had been visiting them after work one evening and got ready to head home. Now, on the FM dial on our radio here, you can pick up ABC. I've no idea, but it was always fun to be able to listen to the network news and such when we were driving. As we were leaving the house, Jeopardy was coming on. Kewl. We got to play along. We listened to the questions, bantered answers back and forth and even tried to figure out how much we would have won. I even think we managed to get the Final Jeopardy question right, believe it or not. Well, Jeopardy ends, and everyone knows what comes on after Jeopardy, right??

WHEEL OF FORTUNE!!!

Oh, we were PUMPED. This was so cool, we didn't have a totally boring ride home. We sat in anticipation of the show, heard the announcer, the music, introduction of Pat Sajack and Vanna White, their little banter, the introduction of the contestants, and are you ready??? Let's see the first puzzle!!! Boo-da-da-bing!! (is anyone here seeing a problem yet??...we didn't) Pat says, "The category is famous sayings, let's have the r, s, t, l, n, and e", ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. (we're STILL not seeing a problem) Pat says to the first contestant (for sake of argument we'll call him John), "John, go ahead and spin the wheel". Josh spins the wheel, we hear the clickety-click-click till it slows down, "$800.00!! Pick a letter!!". John says, "Pat, can I have an H??", ding, ding, ding.

RIGHT AT THAT MOMENT, Wonder Hubby and I looked at each other and realized that:

a)We couldn't SEE the puzzle.
b)We had no idea how many words or letters were said puzzle.
c)We had no idea where those three "H"s that John just called went.
d)We were morons.

We also laughed ourselves simple. Here are two college educated professionals, who couldn't figure out immediately that you can't play a VISUAL game over the radio. DUH MOMENT!!!! That was many years ago now.

I got to have my own very personal DUH MOMENT a just a few years ago, only this time, my children were witnesses, and I will never live this one down and yes, they do periodically remind me of it, just to let me know they remember, I think.

We drove across the country. My husband, our three boys and I drove the entire Lewis & Clark Trail, WHICH, is probably one of the most cool things I've ever done in my entire life. Once on the west coast, we had family obligations in Seattle, and then we had to drive rather quickly back to PA. We did opt to make a few select stops along the way. One was to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, OH, and the other was to the Black Hills of South Dakota so that we could see Mt. Rushmore. Seeing Mt. Rushmore had been a childhood dream of mine and I couldn't be *that* close to it and not go see it.

We made it to the base of the mountain and our hotel just before the time that they would be lighting it up for the evening. Every night they have a ceremony, and then light up the entire mountain face, if you EVER get a chance to see it, do so, it's an amazing experience. Well, we drove up the mountain, and got to the main gates, after all, it is a National Park, and we had to pay admission. All of a sudden, I noticed this big white dog kind of meandering among the cars waiting to go through the toll gates to get into the parking area. I looked at it kind of quickly, it was white, had a beard, lots of long white hair. It looked like an Afghan Hound mix of some sort. Then I realized there were three, maybe four of them just milling around the cars, and I went OFF on a rant.

WHY would people let their dogs out NOW, HERE?? Here's these DOGS, roaming around this area streaming with cars and trucks and RVs and stuff, and any one of them could run over these dogs in a heartbeat!!! What were those idiot owners thinking by letting their dogs out NOW to do their business, especially since it wasn't off to the side somewhere, but just out in the middle of the pavement???

While I was going off on this rant, I was mostly watching one of these dogs until it went close to the guardrail where the mountain just dropped off. All of a sudden, while I was in mid-sentence, one of those big white dogs OOOP and slipped underneath the guardrail like nothing and disappeared!!! I stopped speaking and looked really HARD at one of the other big white dogs.

THEY WERE MOUNTAIN GOATS!!!!!

So, now, here I've gone off on this 5 solid minute rant about irresponsible people and their big white dogs, for mountain goats, AND, there are witnesses. I suppose I'm just going to have to keep bribing them to keep from humiliating me.

DUH MOMENTS. Everybody has them, we all hate them, and we pray that nobody sees them. They're not always funny when they happen, but make for GREAT stories over the family dinner table years later during the holidays. Welcome to the beginning of the holiday season everyone, get those DUH STORIES out, dust them off, and be proud!!!