You ever wake up one day and realize that someone you’ve known for a rather long time is just a fucking moron and you never picked up on it?

It’s one of the weirdest phenomena I’ve experienced in dealing with other human beings but it’s happened enough in my lifetime to know that I can’t be alone in this.

(And I know it sounds a lot like when I talked about just noticing someone’s inherent white trashiness for the first time, but I think this one is far far more prevalent, although sometimes synonymous and/or coincidental.)

I’m usually pretty good about picking out complete idiots on short order. I don’t necessarily judge by appearance but, you know, if you’re walking around with a “South will rise again!” t-shirt or have obviously had entirely too much plastic surgery done on your face then yeah, I’m not too proud to say I’m going to make assumptions about your mentality/priorities/decision-making. (I’m not saying this makes me a good person. I’m just being honest.) However, for the most part, I tend to give people a fair shot to prove themselves as competent human beings, even when the easy assumption is to categorize them as idiots at first. And when it comes right down to it, idiots will expose themselves pretty quickly. It’s in their nature. Kinda like my inherent dorkiness just comes out at every opportunity. (Someone climbs into my car and hears that I have my Ace of Base tape in the tape deck, I overquote some stand-up comic every half hour, I swoon when boys make literary references…) Eventually they’ll say something completely ignorant or socially retarded or generally hateful or impossibly arrogant/delusional and it’s safely exposed, giving everyone permission to dismiss the importance of their convictions.

But then there are those imbeciles who walk among us and hide their real identities in stealth somehow. Having intimately known a handful of these people, I recognize that all their traits seem to be the same and I think I’ve figured out what makes them undetectable to everyone from the normal to the overly critical/judgmental. They’re always oblivious to the fact that they’re behind the curve and, while they are delusional and rather proud of the wealth of knowledge they believe they possess, they aren’t overly arrogant about that aspect of themselves. Because of this, they are capable of divulging entirely inaccurate ideas with all the certainty in the world that they are not only correct but that their statements are novel and indicative of their inherent genius without anyone questioning it. It’s almost brilliant enough of a tactic to negate any of the idiot’s all-encompassing stupidity except for the fact that it’s all unintentional. But in general, on a day-to-day basis, they are competent, humble and sometimes even very very informed on a handful of [usually trite] subjects which only supports the initial hypothesis that they’re on equal footing with the rest of your company. If they do have any intelligent philosophies or freethinking thought, 98.5% of the time it is because they heard it from someone else and believe that they must be brilliant if they can agree with it.

And, because they give such an assured, level-headed presentation of themselves, you welcome them into that level of Friendly Acceptance - where you no longer have to work really hard at trying to figure them out or constantly assess their personality - because you think you’re in the clear, on safe, common ground. Which is why, when you finally realize that this person is a moron, it comes as a complete shock and almost an insult to your abilities of perception and/or evaluation[atory?] skills. Once the switch has happened you kind of can’t see why you never noticed it as all the facts line up, all the evidence is clear, the dots all practically connect themselves, etc. (It’s identical to how people treat the more talented liars until they’ve been given sufficient evidence that these formerly-trusted people are just habitually dishonest. There’s that noticeable mental switch from friendly-and-unassuming to untrusting-and-disgusted once the liar’s true nature has been exposed, especially if it’s taken a while to realize.) Maybe you never noticed because you were distracted with sexual attraction to the person? Maybe this person just said the right things at the right time and it fit what you needed for a Good First Impression, so you didn’t notice anything else? Maybe this person was so much fun to be around and their inaccurate ideas came across as eccentric and bohemian and you, wanting to emulate this sort of free-spirited mentality, didn’t bother to think that it could just be someone else’s ass smoke? Hell, maybe you just like giving people the benefit of the doubt because you believe in the good in everyone…

Whatever the case, there you are, looking at a relationship (platonic or otherwise. Doesn’t matter) with someone you’d never really objectively scrutinized apparently (because you don’t think that’s necessary for every single person you welcome into your world), and realizing that you’re more repulsed by this type of idiot than the more dismissable ones you run into on a daily basis. And then you start feeling like an idiot for not being a little more aware, but not so much that it makes you consider staying this person’s friend/lover/executor/etc.

This has happened to me a dozen-or-so times but thrice in a very large-scale fashion that hit very close to home and made me pull a “What in hell was I thinking this whole time?! Have I no basis from which to observe social cues!?” [which is a phrase I feel should only be necessary for poor hairstyle decisions... in my ideal world where people are never in crappy relationships with idiots or spend money on idiots' music.] And, while the first two of these instances happened a while ago and could easily be attributed to my codependence on mind-altering substances, this most recent one feels even more severe because I recognize the phenomenon so easily now and am able to subconsciously flip that switch so that I can run.
Run far far away.
With no lingering regrets or over-the-shoulder glances to trip me up.

Still though. There should be a mandatory test administered to everyone for easy identification purposes so I don’t have to keep learning this lesson. Seriously, I don’t have time to overanalyze every single person I come in contact with’s intelligence or delusional habits. It’s not healthy. But I also don’t like being blindsided by the realization of people’s idiocy years down the road after finally noting that 90% of what comes out of their mouths is just asinine.

::Sigh::

The idea of living in solitude becomes more appealing every day. If only I didn’t enjoy shoddy, smoke-filled karaoke dives so much…