Life is tough, but it's even tougher if you're stupid.

Now I have nothing against stupid people. If they want to be stupid, fine. I just don't want them doing it in front of me.

I'm not the smartest person around, but I'm not stupid. I know when to, as my daddy used to say, "be silent and be thought a fool, rather than speak up and remove all doubt." Would that certain other people could say the same.

I was in the doctor's office the last week to see about my recurring backaches and the lady sitting next to me in the waiting room was on a roll. She was talking non-stop when I got there and was still talking when I left.

From what I could tell, the lady had lost a member of her family and when a man asked her about the loss she replied, "Well, the doctor said she's better off 'cause if she'd lived, she most likely would'a been a vegetarian."

Now folks, the sad thing, aside from the death of this dear one, was that nobody in the waiting room (and there were about ten of us) acted as though she'd said anything wrong. I looked around to see if anyone caught the obvious malapropism but they all seemed to be engrossed in the lady's description of her loved one's sudden departure from this world.

"She and her husband, they were putting in new screens on their windows and she just fell off the ladder, right on her head!" she said, gesturing madly. "She stayed in a coma for over a week. Her heart was bad, too, though. She'd just had a cauterization at the University Hospital."

It took every ounce of strength I had to sit still without keeling over in laughter but the others in the room remained spellbound. This woman didn't know her behind from a hole in the ground yet she continued with her barrage for over an hour. I was fit to be tied.

Now I am not making fun of this woman simply because of her obvious lack of knowledge in the correct speech department. I, too, have erred on occasion when speaking and have embarrassed myself to no end. I also once humiliated my father, who loved words and was forever critiquing mine.

The case in point was a Miss Keep Lincoln County Green Pageant in the early sixties. I happened to be in the five finalists (stop laughing) and was assigned a word which I was to describe and use in a sentence.

My word, or compound word as it turned out to be, was "self-confidence." I bravely took the slip of paper from the emcee, glanced at the word, threw my shoulders back, gripped the microphone, and in my loudest voice proclaimed, "Self-confidence is… having confidence in yourself!" Needless to say, I didn't win.

And I can't swear to it but just before the audience broke out in a collective snicker, I saw my daddy slide down into his seat and disappear under the seat in front of him. At least, I didn't see him again until the next morning when he met me at the breakfast table with a forced smile, a dictionary under his arm.

Even so, the verbose lady at the doctor's office didn't aggravate me so much with her butchering of the language as by her blatent intrusion into my quiet time and that of all the other captives. I can assure you, though the rest of the patients looked interested, at least a few of them couldn't have cared less about this big mouth's take on the dearly departed or her own aches and pains, which were many. They were just being polite and, it passed the time.

She was relentless. I was called back to the examining room and after a couple of X-rays and a quick check by the doctor was ushered back to the waiting room for more….well, waiting. The blabbermouth had not let up while I was gone but a couple of patients had lost interest by then and were asleep, one of them dead, I think.

"I've been to three doctors just this week," she said. "Tuesday I went to the stomach doctor in Augusta. "I was having pains in my stomach, ya know. Well, he told me my abominable muscles weren't what they used to be, so this (she lifted up her substantial belly) is what's happened." The man to my left turned green.

My patience was wearing thin so I went to the window at the desk and asked the receptionist how long it would be before I was finished. She checked my chart and told me I that if I wanted to pick up my X-rays the next day I was free to leave. I agreed.

As I was exiting, I caught the tail end of another "doctor's visit."

"…and then yesterday my legs swelled and I went to the very-closeveins doctor…"

I closed the door, stood outside for a moment, then it was all I could do to get to my car. Though I was tired and not a little perturbed, there I stood, doubled over, practically prostate with laughter!

Sometimes stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward.