Pushing THE Pull Door

ESSAY – PUSHING THE PULL DOOR

I guess we’ve all pushed an unlocked but closed door despite it being plainly marked ‘pull’ or pulled and tugged at a door that is obviously labelled push.

I seem to do it more than most. Some momentary lapse of reason blinds me to the obvious and helpful signs that I should push the door, and I start yanking it towards myself.

The worst part of this is that there is always someone there to witness my temporary collapse of common sense and willing to laugh at my misfortune. The sneering condescending laughter won’t just last a few moments, but continue for the day if not beyond. My friends may be told, directly or by text, that I behaved like a Pratt. My degree in literature and philosophy amount to nothing.

If anything, you having an academic degree make it more likely that some people will be keen to nit-pick every minor, petty mistake you make in life. Cogito Ergo Dumb. You pushed the pull door – therefore you’re an idiot.  You can almost hear the ‘Na nah na nah na nah’ sounds round you.

Seeing the intellectual stumble over some minor task makes a smug arrogant twerp feel somehow smarter than the smart guy. He knows that if he, the smug one, approached the pull door, he would pull its handles towards himself, and not make a buffoon of himself trying to press himself forward. He seeks out every opportunity to outsmart the apparent brain-box so he can feel a little bit cleverer.

Sometimes, the smug one will push a pull door himself, but the cruelty of Murphy’s Law has it that no one will see him do it, so his embarrassment dies with the event, as he will never admit in conversation that he was given to a daft action too, and yet he will continue to find little ways to outsmart Braniac, looking for any possible weakness he can exploit.

Some people take no interest in the greater achievements of those of a higher IQ. He is unimpressed by a medical scientist contributing to a cure for a major disease and thus saving 1.000’s of lives. He can do a Rubik Cube puzzle in two minutes and they can’t. So you developed new form of energy saving and fast jet engine propulsion, well that’s nothing. I can remember the names of everyone in the winning 1966 England football World Cup squad.  

Homo-smug-apian wins. We are suffering the survival of the thickest. There are more dullards in the World and they will outbreed the brainy boffin types leaving us in a World weaned on soap opera, reality TV and casual racism.

Bright kids at schools often get bullied for being too smart – bookworms tend to get snubbed – the bully is triumphant and more willing to step forward, assertively. Human minds stagnate for lack of use and yet if you read a book some people go out of their way to distract your attention. Even the library, once a sanctuary of silent study, now becomes a hall for people to talk and yell into their mobile phones.

Minds stagnate and atrophy from lack of use.  Dinosaurs died from comet-fuelled extinction. We will perish for turning into couch potatoes. We could be reaching for the stars but we are more likely to reach for a TV remote control, to watch cartoons about space travelling mice.

Arthur Chappell