Nope, it's just as incoherent. Sorry about that.

I think last night's post suffered from a lack of time in which to think coherently, but since integrating a couple of other events that occurred yesterday... here goes.

At ballet, a mother brought in some car keys which she'd found in the parking lot sitting behind a particular make and model of car... which happens to be the same that my recently licensed cousin drives. Her assumption was that said cousin (who we shall call C for brevity's sake) had left/dropped the keys - oops, what a silly mistake! And that would be fine, but it's assumed that gee, knowing C, of course it's her car (of which there are billions) and her keys, and silly girl, never mind, we should be used to it.

I took the keys and pulled out my phone to call her before looking at the keys again. Uh, they're Ford keys. C's car is not a Ford. So, this silly mother had (well-intentionedly, and all) seen the keys, put 2+2+2 together to make 49, and called my attention to something crazy important.

How often have you formed assumptions about someone based on someone's version of their behavior? How often have you classed them after observing them a (very) few times?
How often have you been sucked into someone else's opinion without questioning their arrival at said opinion?

I'm guilty on all fronts. I know that a lack of grammatical mastery does not a stupid person make.
I know that being in the top 1% of academic results does not equate to emotional intelligence.
Hell, being in the top 5% doesn't even equate to common sense. I mean the type of common sense that goes: Remove keys from ignition, get out of car, depress door lock, check keys are in hand, close door, holding handle up to facilitate locking mechanism. 

Yep, I famously failed step four and locked my car keys in my car three times in three months. A few times I may ever have failed step five, causing the door lock to unlock, whereupon I helpfully opened the door, relocked it, and carefully closed it (holding handle up) before swearing VERY loudly. Mom, if you're reading this, I didn't really swear. Yep. Truly.  I shall be forever grateful for the coathanger-wielding expertise of burly men (well, it was insured, so if they HAD stolen it instead of returning my keys I wouldn't have been unduly devastated).

*** Mind you, this is not quite on a par with a good friend who locked his keys in his car... on a camping trip. Four hours from anywhere. When we'd exhausted all the available car key and coathanger gymnastics, he wound up taking the door off the car to recover the keys.

I digress. Last night my beloved and I went to the beach. For reasons known only to him, he wore regular shorts but took boardies. We did a little financial discussion in the car - "OK, I've got $20 for souvlakis," "Sweet! Here's $10."
"What's that for?"
"Der! Ice-cream." As if you have to ask.
Then he decided to change shorts. Good plan. Except... ten minutes later in the fish and chip place:
"Can I have a lamb souvlaki?"
"Um, yeah. About that... So I put the money in my shorts pocket, but then I changed my shorts..."
So I handed him the keys, laughing at the stunned mullet look on his doctorly face. Hmmm.

So, just because someone can do amazing things with lines of code they will not remember to put the money in the pants they're wearing. Just because you think someone is a ditz doesn't mean they will leave their car keys lying on the ground beside their car, and just because I can write amazing blog posts of stunning insight and clarity does not mean I ever actually will.