A Disneyland vacation offered an opportunity to spot stupidity at its finest

Everyone needs to travel because it exposes you to stupidity, and I think that’s a good thing. A person needs to stay alert to stupidity so they can rage against it.

If you stay home, you’re still surrounded by stupidity — but it’s a stupidity you’ve grown accustomed to, so it’s like you don’t even see it anymore.

You become what I’m going to call stupidity blind. You know, like nose blind when your olfactory senses become numb to the fact that your house smells like cat food with a hint of mildew.

I just returned from a trip to California to see my daughter. Since we both share the same birthday, we decided to celebrate it together at Disneyland. It was pretty much a stupidity convention.

Please note: I’m not throwing shade at people because at times I might have been part of that convention.

I say this because you never know what a person waiting in the Space Mountain roller coaster line next to you is thinking. Sure, I knew exactly what my family was thinking. It’s that I needed to quit saying I want a Mickey Mouse churro. But a stranger might be pondering that I’m an idiot obsessed with churros.

In defense of my need for a churro let me just say that there is a churro stand right next to Space Mountain. I wanted to stop and get one. Alas, I was told we didn’t have time for me to eat a churro. Yet there we were, standing in a long line where I would have had plenty of time to (yeah, you guessed it) eat a churro. Excuse me for being a little miffed about that.

For those of you worried, I did get my churro. And it was at that churro stand where I witnessed a flagrant act of stupidity that we can all learn from called “remember what your T-shirt says.”

A woman wearing a navy-blue T-shirt that was emblazoned with the saying “Kindness Matters” on the front and “Be Kind” on the back was berating the churro stand employees because they didn’t have “blueberry sugar dust” churros.

I’m not sure, but I’m guessing the blueberry sugar dust is just sugar with blue food coloring, so not exactly a culinary milestone in anyone’s life. Yet, this woman in her kindness T-shirt was throwing a raging temper tantrum over it.

I wanted to say something like, “Lady, I don’t think you should be wearing that T-shirt if you’re going to act like that,” but her ferociousness over blue sugar scared me so I just casually mentioned that she might want to turn her T-shirt inside out for obvious reasons. Then I took my churro and bolted to the safety of Adventure Land.

It wasn’t until I got to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride where I saw an act so egregious it made me almost forget the kindness lady. I witnessed a man passionately flossing his teeth while waiting in line.

Talk about beyond disgusting. At one point I was debating what’s worse: this man flossing his teeth and spewing his mouth detritus far and wide or the people I’ve seen cutting their toenails on Southwest flights. After much thought I think I’m going to have to call it a tie.

Fortunately, none of this spoiled my trip. I’ve come back refreshed with my stupidity lethargy gone. I’m now on high alert for public flossers and unkind people wearing kindness T-shirts.

Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs @snarkynsuburbs, on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.