1 Hour Of Smart People Stories From r/AskReddit

what is the stupidest thing you have seen another wise smart person do mine was a stupidest thing I have done it was pretty embarrassing I was leaving my flat and I was talking to a girl in my uni course as I got to the door to exit the building I noticed someone outside and was going to let them come inside before hour left after about six or seven seconds of me just standing there the girl asked me what was up and I told her that the person outside must have been having trouble getting inside she then pointed out that it was my reflection look at the bright side it was probably equally embarrassing for the other guy once I got a call from one of my college professors one of the smartest and friendliest person I know prof. can you pick me up at this address thirty miles from his place without public transport me sure how did you end up there prof I went to sell my car to this guy lmao this is my favorite I can totally see how this happened my boss and I were chatting on the phone about some random work issue he told me to call so and so for some reason I told him I needed the number he said hold on I gotta look up the number on my phone shuffle sounds crap where's my phone dang swerve alert my phone must have fallen out of my pocket sonofa well gonna have to call you back once I find it I cracked up until he jokingly yelled don't you tell anyone about this only heard about it but it's fantastic I joined Mensa for the card when I went to Kinko's to laminate it I didn't read the instructions on the wall and the laminate melted to the Machine I had to get the Kinkos guide to open the Machine for me but by then the card was bubbling when he scraped it out and saw what it was he laughed he laughed so hard thought there was 60 cents in a dollar took him a solid couple minutes to figure out that there wasn't after we just sat there laughing at him kkoma thought there was 60 seconds in $1.00 took him a solid couple dollars to figure out that there wasn't my wife the smartest person I know looked in the sky at about 3 p.m. and asked me why the Sun was so dim she was looking at the moon please tell me you leaned over and in a Scottish accent said no donkey that's the moon was at Law School with a smart guy we shared a house he wouldn't heat anything up in the microwave if it hadn't been bought as a microwavable product he was convinced that it would get pumped with radiation and he'd be eating radioactive food if I was the dumb I probably would have done it to become the Hulk my grandfather is a chemical engineer that used to work for Dow handling stopped-up off some of their biggest plants he went on to be an expert in industrial cleanup operations he's a practical genius he also decided it was perfectly acceptable to put stuffing into a plastic bowl and slide it into a 400 degree oven I once put a pizza in the oven on the wooden plate I was going to use to serve it after so I'm not going to judge him we still ate the pizza but I definitely had a strange taste I once tried opening a finger Pillsbury biscuits with a can opener a few years ago my mother took my picture with it to use it against me in the future I had a college professor insist that afternoon started at 11 a.m. because that's when he had lunch I have no idea how you could get that wrong afternoon starts afternoon it's in the dang word fun thing about college faculty they are generally very very knowledgeable about one thing only and actually pretty stupid about a lot of other things that's what you get for spending ten years devoted to the study of something usually somewhat obscure to the point where you are probably the world authority on it one time my friends and I were walking around downtown and we were passing through a parking lot one of my friends noticed this and asked is this a car dealership no this is a parking lot so naturally he responded with but why are there cars here took a few minutes of explaining for him to remember that cars do tend to be in parking lots this one is so bad at reading it got me stupid my boyfriend we did those 90-second microwavable rice packets and I smelled something burning I asked how long did you put the rice in for he said three minutes I told him it was only supposed to be 90 seconds and he looked at me like I was stupid and told me again that's 90 seconds then a few seconds later he turned bright red still make fun of him for it if you makes him feel better I did something similar I put one in and forgot to make a tear in the top for event at about 75 seconds in I hear a pop that sucked a clean up oh boy I finally have a story for this one one of my mom's best friends growing up has a brother who was absolutely brilliant this is a guy who graduated top of his class got a perfect score on the set and went to and graduated from Harvard some time into his adult life he decided to go to the grocery store a few blocks away ordinarily he walks but he decided to drive this one particular time he went to the store got his stuff and proceeded to walk home the next morning he went to get into his car only to discover that it was missing from his driveway so he filed a police report a few days went by and he had to go to the grocery store again he walked like he normally does and found his car exactly where he left it a few days before this is a Harvard Graduate I did this first time driving to school alone I rode the bus home my doctor resident and top university hospital wife constantly misuses the words door and window interchangeably it's a riot please close the door where are you going the door oh crap I meant the window this is practically daily weirdest most confusing issue anyone could ever have like confusing floor and ceiling or cat and rabbit a girl I knew in high school needed a piece of paper so she turned on the computer and printed one out she probably felt smart as heck doing it too working at IT support woman with a PhD in biology calls up her keys keeps ticking do the standard troubleshooting but couldn't fix it so I went to her desk what was the cause of the key sticking while Miss PhD was eating a whole pineapple over her keyboard about five years ago I got one of those motion-activated air fresheners and put it on my dresser it wasn't until I got up the next morning that I discovered it was lined up directly at eye level where I got out of bed I effectively booby-trapped my room against myself very confident I see my sister-in-law is a molecular biologist her level of genius is astounding she put herself through school via scholarships but made pocket money working at Ponderosa one day she was changing the oil in the fryer set the old hot grease tub on the floor and proceeded to step in it she literally cooked her foot it took several skin grafts but mostly looks normal now so whenever someone does something stupid in our family we say they cook their foot Oh cringe that is a seriously big deal professors with all kinds of degrees who've written renowned books papers can't figure out how to make a video play on the projector instead of the monitor my father told me a story about his father my grandfather was a brilliant chemical engineer working for Procter & Gamble he actually led the team that figured out how to make liquid tide one day he came home scooped himself some ice cream put chocolate chips on top and put it in the microwave he was surprised that the ice cream melted rather than the chocolate I stuck my hand in a pot of boiling water my brain just stopped working for that second apparently I took a frying pan out of the oven without a mitt we should start our own cooking show friend is standing in line at Target and has a 9-volt battery and a penny in his pocket the two make contact and naturally the penny gets hot people's the nine-volt out of his pocket and looks at it as if he has never seen this object before he sticks his tongue on it shocks himself pulls it away looks at it does it again pulls it away looks at it and does it a time the cashier just stared at him like someone let a monkey out of the zoo a lot of smart people I know are just terrible with money I know people with 4.0 GPA and high paying jobs that are borderline bankrupt because they spend every dollar they have trying to keep up with the high rollers who run their company like these are smart people but incredibly insecure as well and that's just a terrible combination I made peanut butter cookies last night and I forgot to put in all of the dry ingredients so you made peanut butter soup my best friend has a genius-level IQ he was in the top ten of my graduating class and has nearly a 4.0 GPA studying Chemical Engineering I once saw him look right down the barrel of a loaded shotgun I did this with a champagne bottle I was trying to open the cork popped bounced off my forehead and then ricocheted off the ceiling I had a round welt on my forehead for a day or two I am NOT a genius my old lady of seven years just finished up a master's in accounting she roasted a chicken yesterday and as the timer rang I yelled to her remember to use a hot pad to take the lid off the roaster pan because like the pan the lid handle is hot I get a sarcastic no duh back from her i watch from a mirror with a good angle of her how she takes the pan out with two hot pads on the side handles of the pan she then sets the pan on the stovetop puts the hob pads back in the dryer then grabs the handle on the lid of the pan she burned her hand again dropped the lid to the floor loudly and then ran to the living room to see if I was laughing I was dumbest smart person I know I love her I was going to bake cookies for my 20th year high school reunion but I encountered a problem I explained this problem to my fiancee me I was going to make cookies for my reunion but it ended up I couldn't Tim why me well your mom gave me that box of cookie cutters that has over 100 cookie cutters and I was going to make cookies in the nine and five shape for the class of 1995 but he didn't come with the number nine it has 1 through 8 but number 9 at this point he just stared at me because he thought I had come to a realization on my own which I didn't me what him you just have to turn the number-6 upside down and it's a 9 me blank look him the number 6 upside down is the number 9 you did realize that didn't you he cracked up when he figured out that I never realized this I have a PhD that's okay my mom is the programmer for Boeing and she complained that her hated blanket was still too hot turns out that the number seven looks like an L upside-down and she thought it was on low well she married me but I forgive her I have a relative cousin of my aunt what's that who has a doctorate in engineer and made a ton of money in petroleum engineering yet over the years has sent a large fraction of its and Nigerian scammers even more interestingly he started doing this before the internet when they just sent snail mail letters to people and has sent it to the same Nigerian family over the decades his way to support Africa I guess but then this man also doesn't believe we landed on the moon or that the Holocaust happened so there's that a girl I went to high school with went to the same university as me she was top five in our graduating class and hasn't gotten lower than a 3.8 in two years of college including biochemistry and organic chemistry one summer day we were out at a bonfire and she had a hood on because and I quote don't moon Rays make you paler my grandfather has a PhD in computer science one of the early ones he was on the team that developed the fingerprint computer that ended the days of using a magnifying glass to match prints the original computer now lives at the Smithsonian it was snowing out and he said he was grilling steaks I thought he was on the outside porch I looked outside and he was not there I found him in the basement using a huge gas grill it took me several minutes to explain to him why this was not a good idea my friend turned 20 one day and we were talking about his birthday I proceeded to comment wow you've been a teenager for 20 years yeah my friends don't let me live that one down told my sister who was turning 25 that she was halfway to 30 spend an incredible amount of time and effort nervously trying to figure out one almost new and very expensive oscilloscope wouldn't turn on reason someone had toggled the switch on one of the built-in power strips on the lab bench turn off I did this two years ago the scale of the amplitude was set in a way that prevented us from seeing any output took us about a week to figure it out we were getting ready for dinner one night and we're kind of in a rush to get it done whatever ever we were miking it required bread well the only bread we had was frozen at the time so we had to quickly defrost it sir my mother randomly yelled for my eldest brother who happens to be the smartest out of all of us to go get it from the freezer and bring it to the kitchen he delivered the frozen breads of the kitchen and our mom had her hands full so she told him take the bread tie off and put it in the microwave so he takes the tie off and puts it in the microwave and set it to defrost not even 30 seconds later he starts saying a mom the bread ties on fire turns out my brother thought it meant bread tie and not the frozen loaf of bread my friend Kevin went to Caltech works for JPL he's an actual rocket scientist literally one of the smartest people I can't think of when we were in our early 20s he had to take his brand-new Honda Civic back to the dealership after two weeks of ownership because he filled it with diesel afterwards I asked him isn't the diesel nozzle incompatible with standard gas tanks his response it's not it wasn't easy but I made it work my friend is a geneticist smart guy all around a few months ago he spent ten minutes trying to push open the door in his kitchen and eventually his hand went through it and he gashed his arm and ended up getting a bunch of stitches if he had pulled the door instead it would have opened I travel a lot for work and am going to London later this month one of my girlfriend's best friends is an eco nurse saving the lives of premature babies every day and has forgotten more about biology and Anatomy than I've ever known she asked what language they speak in London and if I was going to visit the Eiffel Tower if I got some free time this one is about me I'm a senior in engineering being paid to do some fancy research that we hope will easily eradicate third world diseases my dad has always managed my finances and never really taught me much I just got a credit card and had a $500 limit spent 492 dollars in a month and got confused when during the next calendar month after the statement my credit card was still being declined I thought the limit reset every month regardless of if you paid your balance it just made sense to me when I called my dad asking why my credit card hadn't reset yet he laughed at me for a solid hour and told all his business partners I laughed it off as being an engineer not a finance person like him but my lack of real-world experience with economics money is also sad I'm a living case of why we should have useful life skills classes in high school when I called my dad asking why my credit card hadn't reset yet he laughed at me for a solid hour and told all his business partners hahaha look how little I taught my son this girl I was kinda seeing at the time asked me if I wanted to watch a movie so we go up to her room she pops in elf and turns to me and asks wait can you watch this since you're Jewish she has a 4.0 GPA and is going to law school next year also when I eventually told her I was a virgin she asked me if I ever had a boner I was 19 not seen directly but heard the professor tell these two stories this man is an expert with nanomaterials and just an all-around physics champion and yet Story one the professor begins watching karate movies and becomes a fan soon he begins to wonder if he can reproduce some of the foots he has seen various martial artists perform on film I am a physicist he says I can do this so he gets a stack of a few cinder blocks and tries to break them with his fists he shattered almost every bone in that hand story to once his homes water heater stopped heating water I am a physicist he says I can do this after all he reasons the water heater is just a really big resistor submerged in a tank of water with some plumbing attached to it all why not repair it himself the basement cleanup cost him a few thousand dollars plus the cost of a new water heater and professional installation what I am NOT a smart man moments have you experienced called LAPD because car window was stolen officer comes and rolls up the window I forgot I rolled it down holy crap someone told me their birthday was on Friday the 13th this year after acknowledging how much they would suck I found a long list online of every upcoming Friday the 13 for the next several decades to check that it would never happen to me I made it fifty years down the list before I thought I realized a slight pattern and that my birthday won't ever not be on the 18th interesting fact because of the day the Gregorian calendar started the 13th falls on a Friday more often than any other day a source I got home one day and my dad had worked it out in Excel we're a fun family once I wanted to test my voicemail so I used my house phone to dial in my cell and when my phone rang I actually answered it expecting someone to be on the other line step 1 obtain yogurt step 2 remove lid step 3 throw yogurt in the trash bin step 4 look at your hand holding the yogurt lid step 5 evaluate all of your life choices step 6 lick lid I used a leaf blower on Hill thought it would be an easy way to get rid of it did not consider how terrifying flying ants are I tried to do the same thing but with a shovel I don't know how I forgot that they can climb I once painted myself into a corner while painting the basement floor had to crawl out the basement window there are still footprints down there to remind of my Goma moment on multiple occasions I have managed to successfully leave my keys in the lock in the car I have no idea how my car has not been stolen yet I've done it with the car running before went through a drive-through ordered paid thank them and then bolted before they even had a chance to hand me my food it didn't realize my abject stupidity until about 10 minutes later when I reached for a fry and got nothing but air manager at a Burger King here don't be ashamed this happens far more often than you would think I would say once or twice a week at least you're not the only one vacuumed hafadh my room music in the ears music stops realize a vacuum a cleaner isn't on , vakama you can add that to the list shaving myself in the shower so I rinsed the razor blade I look down at it and there were still some hairs caught in the edges of the blade so I figured I'm just gonna run my thumb through here to clean this off stupid it was still stupid when I did it again several years later the lovely image of your fingertip turning into nice bloody gills in Texas there are a lot of scorpions so I put the ones that I find inside the house in an old Folgers coffee container around a week later I thought all the scorpions would be dead so I dumped them on the countertop to see the corpses in the three or four I found scurried like a mother off the countertop into the carpet and I screamed like a little girl I once threw my wallet onto a strangers shed roof because I am an idiot walking down the street playing catch with myself using wallet getting cocky going higher trying to spin it going higher lands on shed frag this reminds me of the time my dad was at the beach and there were seagulls bothering him he decided to throw his car keys at the seagull which proceeded to pick them up and fly away he chased the seagull until it eventually dropped them but he says that he almost died when he saw his keys flying away talking on the phone while packing my bag for the day where the heck is my phone I often lose my keys while I'm driving for some reason I wanted to try to step on a rake like they do in comedies or whatever so I put just a little little weight on the pointy things just to see if it even moved and bam straight on my nose it did hurt a lot I did this too for the exact same reason to see if it actually happened like he does in movies dang that hurt I work a nighty and had a ticket for a user whose email was broken that I was trying to get a hold off by emailing them for three days till my boss slowly talked me through the situation until it hit me opening the door to her room to stick my head in and talk to someone briefly before saying bye and closing the door on my own head I've done this multiple times over the years and I'm still always surprised when the door goes clunk against my noggin I never realized why it's always the last place you look until I was like 27 explain hold up to pump at gas station went inside to pay cash walk back out and drove off no gas I once accused a co-worker who didn't get along with me for stealing my sunglasses in front of half the staff we all know where this is headed and when I finished my rant my sunglasses fell off for the top of my head into my hands I quietly apologized with my shades on shades on equals good recovery I dropped my straightener instead of jumping back so it doesn't burn my feet like I usually do I grabbed the goddamn hot plate and held on to it till I put it back on the I have no idea how my body didn't automatically let it go but dang did I get burned afterwards when you grabbed something really hot the muscle spasms can keep your hand clenched momentarily this is one reason we were taught in chemistry to always use the back of your hand to test if something was hot if you got too close and accidentally touched it you wouldn't grab and caused massive damage by bet looking at pee will divert the blood away from the debilitating pressure this headache is causing and now I've got two problems to deal with I don't immediately see the flaw in this logic please explain one time I was making kool-aid and I dumped the powder in the trashcan in put the packet in the kool-aid container there's something about the muscle memory involved with trash cans that causes the brain to just shut down I have thrown away far too many spoons I once kept pressing the same button on an elevator trying to get to the floor below not realizing the button I was pressing was for the floor I was already at I was wondering why the door kept opening needless to say I felt like an idiot on my last day of finals last semester I was so dead tired that I walked all the way out to my car about half a mile from campus when I realized I forgot my expensive Ray Ban sunglasses in the classroom so naturally I walked all the way back to the classroom where people were still taking the exam when my professor asked me what I was looking for I asked her if she had seen my sunglasses to which she replied without a beat you mean the ones on your head I may not be a smart man but I'm definitely not a smart woman either one time I tried to pry apart two frozen hamburger patties with the patties in my right hand and the knife in my left pointed to my right hand an hour later at the emergency room the attending nurse had trouble believing I was a university student I live in a region that doesn't get snow often let alone more than a few inches when it finally does finally it snows here and it's so exciting except that I still have to go to work so when I got to my door I grabbed the handle and yanked and yanked trying to pry that dank thing open I couldn't believe it it was frozen shut finally after almost falling down and busting my ass I called my boss and said my car door is frozen shut I'm just going to stay home today the next day I had to leave for work again and at this point majority of the snow was melted I unlocked the door got in and started the engine when it all of a sudden hit me I never unlocked my door on the previous day I did not feel like a smart woman was doing laundry one time and had half a load of whites left underneath the whites was a white blanket I did the half load of whites and then did the white blanket my girlfriend asked why didn't I just do the white blanket with the rest of the whites we got into a whole argument about it then when she gave me my alone time I thought to myself yep she was right this whole time oh I had one this morning went downstairs to eat the candy bar I bought last night and had legitimately forgot that I had eaten it the night before I think I'll eat i.t now they just renovated the Wendy's I frequent and I filled one hand with ketchup because I didn't line the spout up with the cap I see you really thought ahead with this one put a bowl in my glove box where my registration was got pulled over by a cop to clarify I don't eat cereal in my car I've had quite a few in the garage alone when I was 16 I stapled my thumb to a wall stud with a pneumatic stapler not so bad other than the fact that I was on an 8 foot ladder and no one was home I was up there for a good hour before I got my shoe off and managed to get a screwdriver with my toe so I could pry the staple out a few years ago I was once again working in the garage I was 28 or 29 at this point I was getting a bunch of stuff organized so I could get some big projects going I decided that my roommates 36 feets tube style TV would work out better on top of the fridge than in the middle of the floor I hosted the Beast which weighed nearly as much as me onto my shoulder and tried to set in on top at 5 feet 9 inches I was just a few inches too short to get it up there so I set the TV down glanced around the garage and spotted a chair with no back that I use when working on my bike I clearly recall thinking to myself that it was an awful idea as I set it in front of the fridge I did it anyway I hosted the TV back up onto my shoulder and then stepped up onto the chair I then leaned the TV onto the edge of the fridge success or not as I pushed the TV rather than it tilting up and sliding back onto the fridge I started to tip over backwards in the split second I had to think I only thought to save the TV I grabbed a hold of it in a bear hug as I went over I landed us first in a bucket of soaking paintbrushes which exploded upon impact to my right was the workbench to my left a 125 gallon aquarium on a stand I was pinned between the two and under the TV I laid there in my blood and paint thinner for a good half hour before regaining enough strength to shimmy out from under the TV my roommate was inside the whole time he helped clean me up super glued all of my cuts back together and went out to survey the damage he's 6 feet 2 inches put the TV right up there no problem I had so many opportunities to ask for help but never did girlfriend penny for your thoughts me you are not going to wind up looking like your mother are you trying to make chili yesterday night I open up the can and dumped the kidney beans into the waste bin instead of the drainer I stared at it for way too long before my brain registered my goof I had Texas chili yesterday night Texan here good making these delicious soft chocolate chip cookies in eighth grade foods and sewing after they got out of the 375 degree oven I grabbed the burning train not having the patience to wait clenched onto it because I was in shock then carted in front of the whole class all in a matter of 40 45 seconds had blisters on every finger had a date last week girl came over I cooked while we're eating and talking conversation switches over to methods of opening wine bottles I tell her about that trick where you put it in your shoe and bang the bottom against a wall and I grabbed the bottle of red light was on the table to demonstrate at the bottle I had just opened 30 seconds earlier I was washing dishes and had an itch in my ear gave myself a cosmic wet willy hug a soapy Willy I'm a girl but recently it was like 9 a.m. and I just arrived in work that day I wore skin colored vest top with a jumper well I lift my jumper and give it a little waft when I get too hot while doing so I had the shock of my life and shouted on my belly buttons gone no belly button was very much still there just the vest top confused me still get laughed at for it now I was at a souvenir shop last year and there was a bowl full of candy candy coated chocolate designed to look like pebbles near the register there was a little spoon in the bowl for people to scoop up some candy place it in their hand and then eat it in my absent-mindedness I eliminated the middleman and just put the whole spoon in my mouth I was 26 years old I'll never forget the look of utter disbelief on the cashy's face as I realized what I had done when I was young I wanted to grow up to be a firetruck I was always told I could be anything I wanted when I grow up I always said I wanted to be a dog the pond near parents house was frozen stupid me having never seen ice before just moved over from Vietnam at a time decided to walk on it to see if it was really frozen that was a cold embarrassing day made a pressure bomb with water and dry ice in physics lab one time it was balanced on a stool on the middle of the room we were all terrified when it pressurized and didn't explode tried knocking it off the stool still didn't go off I went over and picked it up must have been adrenaline preventing me from thinking clearly because someone handed me a knife and said that I should make a little hole and use the pressure to spray the water at high speeds result no crap the thing exploded in my hands couldn't hear anything for about 15 seconds and my whole chest was a tad bruised but turned out fine immediately had that moment of well that was really stupid dumbest thing I've ever done and I did it with some of the smartest people I know cheery me on not sure if somehow nobody realized what was gonna happen or if they just wanted to see me do it I poured pancake batter into a toaster two days in a row my mom and I needed to take my car to a shop to get it fixed our plan was we would drive separately there and then we would drive back together in the same car typical situation right well we got about halfway to the shop when we realized we were in the same car already and forgot to actually drive my car to the shop as well I ate fish food I don't know why I thought it would never be a good idea but the second it hit my town gay vomit like I literally had to dash to the toilet and projectile vomit because I decided to eat fish food my brother bet me that I couldn't set off the trigger on a rat trap without getting caught in it think of a bear trap but smaller and without teeth I did not win I was sipping some tea holding it in my hand and the condensation of the glass made my hand wet I thought I want to dry that off and attempted to get a napkin with that same hand so I dropped my tea and it clattered to the table I think I need to step out of the gene pool what have you witnessed someone do that made you realize he/she is really really smart my wife's grandfather he's a retired electrical engineer with a dozen patents to his name and a long list of recognitions I can't be bothered to remember or name I always knew he was brilliant it never realized just how until one day last year we were visiting and he got a phone call keep in mind he's been retired for 20 years and is 86 years old the phone call was from an electrical engineering firm from halfway across the globe asking if they could fight him out to a site and have him consult on the energy capture of a hydroelectric dam they were building they'd run into a problem that none of them all electrical engineers could solve they had consulted three of the top related university departments in the US on the issue and the last one had referred them to him 20 minutes on the phone and he agreed to think about it two days later he had solved their issue and written the solution on a single 8 X 11 of paper which he scanned and emailed to the company he said he took so long to write it up because he didn't want to have to fly all the way there at his age his explanation was so clear I was able to understand and follow it with no relevant higher education one time my drunk uncle was in jail and needed bail money and being that my dad was the only one in the family with any real savings they all look to him to fork up 100 percent the cash having been asked he realized this situation had two possible outcomes 1 pay for his bail and never get the money back to not pay for the bail and the whole family blame him for it so my dad decided to throw them a curveball he told them that whatever the rest of the family raises of a bail he'll not only match it he'll offer double whatever they raised together nobody offered one cent blame averted quadrangle if I had a teacher in high school that using both hands could write a sentence starting from the beginning and end simultaneously he even split the middle word of the sentence he also spoke around five languages what the Frick I was playing the card game Egyptian rats Cree with some friends and then all of us noticed that one of our friends were slapping a bit too fast to be believed it turns out he was counting all of our cards and had each of our decks memorized which is just insane till it's not Egyptian rat screw older brother always was terrible at school I can remember him straight up asking why he needed to graduate high school and then again in college he then accepted a low-level job after graduation in marketing that ultimately fell apart due to the company executives screwing up big-time during all of it he somehow was able to keep a small client and with him seven months of working was promoted to their executive marketing director making six figures now he has multiple clients on the side and is always scheming something up duties as hard-headed as they come but nonetheless a dang marketing genius blows my mind how far he has come I was once in Chinatown and I saw this old Chinese guy with a bunch of groceries he had tied the bags together by the handle and slung them over his shoulder he looks ridiculous the next week I was struggling with a lot of groceries and I remembered the old Chinese guy stopped on the sidewalk titled my bags together and walked home like the unencumbered dock I became that day not a person but my parents old dog my mom would get bones from the butcher shop for their dog they were long enough that the dog couldn't get all the marrow out of the center the dog figured out that only my stepdads truck was heavy enough to break them after experimenting with the other vehicles at the house there was usually a bone in the same spot on the driveway every time I went home reminds me of crows dropping nuts on crosswalks in high school I had a friend who we made fun of all the time for being dumb but he would have the wackiest ideas that would somehow work one time around Christmas of myself a more year a few of us decided to buy a 30-pack and then later decided we didn't feel like drinking it that night I couldn't keep it at my house but one of my friend's parents was coming to pick all my buddies up nobody knew how they were going to get the xxx out of my house into one of their houses then my friend came up with a genius idea he went upstairs in my house and wrapped the 30 in wrapping paper he then proceeded to carry it right out to the car with our friend's mom waiting and say it was a gift for his girlfriend who he was going to be seeing later that night I realized that not being great at school doesn't mean someone isn't ingenious I knew two guys an undergraduate who would play mental chess as they'd passed in the hall one guy would say Knight to Queen 3 or whatever the other guy would roll back his eyes for a second and then not to acknowledge the move both guys then kept walking in opposite directions later that day when they passed again the second guy would declare his counter move a game could last days and they never forgot where any of the pieces were each had a mental image of the board sure they might have been faking but these guys were always first and second on the deans on a list for all four years of my undergraduate I knew them pretty well I think the mental chess was legit most really good players can do this when someone becomes familiar enough with the game it becomes a lot easier to recognize patterns of course intelligence is required advantageous to get good at chess sitting in a best friend's apartment on the East Coast in the mid-1980s he's working on some code on a prototype UNIX workstation mips had given him he runs his program and it produces an answer then runs it again and produces a different answer thinks about it for a minute and pronounces the CPU is broken right the CPU is broken never heard that one before has it occurred to you that yes it had occurred to him went through three or four scenarios then he pulled out the machine level debugger and started stepping through the code look right here the flags weren't updated right in this instruction yet whatever sends email on the brand-new Internet to Mapes gets a response the next day oh you have that CPU we have verified your issue we will put a replacement in the mail promptly his CPU was broken 30 minutes from diagnosis to request to repair anybody who can explain highly complex things very simply it takes an intelligent person to understand it but it takes a brilliant person to grasp it so fully they can dumb it down to explain it to anybody I think it was fine man who tried to write an introductory textbook on some obscure topic and concluded that more research was needed because he was unable to explain the topic simply enough I was at my desk waiting to make a purchase over the phone and I mentioned to a co-worker that I always have to pull my credit card out I should have this number memorized by now another co-worker overheard that and said I know your visa number and spit it right out after I got off the phone I asked him WTF and he said he heard me say it a couple weeks earlier the numbers just stick with him that way I already knew he was a bright guy but that took it up a notch I'd ask him very politely to not ruin your life when you sit down in a meeting for work where you're trying to solve a big problem and someone can say that's the wrong question you need to be asking people who can do that generally understand the bigger picture and all of the various variables and factors in play and how everything fits together it's some next-level action to watch the entire room go wow we are looking at trees and that guy's looking at the forest my responses are limited you must ask the right question lazy people are the best at this I witnessed a kindergartener who couldn't draw straight lines keep his pencil still and drag the paper around to draw a triangle you'll never be as lazy as the person who named the fireplace a kid in second grade already knew algebra everyone knew he was smart for April Fool's Day that year our teacher decided to be cute and give us a pop quiz so she went to the 8th grade class and asked for an algebra test made copies and handed them out to us some of the kids were freaking out and the teacher assured us that we already went over this so she left the room and some of the kids started crying she came back in after a few minutes and said that it was just a joke but she graded the tests anyways the smart kid scored an 18 stroke 20 my stepfather used to teach me math that was several years beyond what I was learning in second grade Diamond Information sponge and he fed me brain anything that I asked for one day my parents got a call from my teacher the teacher told them that I was teaching my classmates fourth fifth grade math in my spare time at school and to make me knock it off I never saw it myself because I was about two years old but when my older sister was around four years old she used to go grocery shopping with my mom she my sister would keep a running tally for all the items in my mom's cart as my mom took something off the shelf my sister would ask the price and then would add it to the total in her head if my mom put something back she would subtract it my sister was right every time when they got to check out she's a doctor now my sister also used to read the bedtime stories to my parents when she was around two years old goddamn genius meanwhile I'm the kid who ate play-doh my dad had a business trip in Seattle that I tagged along on so I could see a soccer match and explore the city he invited me to go to the Research Hospital within one day and I agreed they were working on testing some type of cardiovascular tool on a cadaver that they would stimulate blood flow into tests seeing my dad who didn't go to college barely graduated from high school lived on welfare with a single mom and who knocked up a teenage girl when he was a teenager himself performed surgery on a cadaver using a tool he invented that could potentially save thousands of lives blew my mind he had hundreds of patents on devices I got surgery three years ago in my shoulder surgeon used a tool he invented in the 90s he's an incredibly smart and hardworking man who got just the right amount of luck to get him where he is today I like it when you meet someone whose English is imperfect but you realize they are very intelligent and are able to explain their thoughts I remember once meeting a Japanese archaeologist who wasn't the best English speaker but when he explained his research to me it was absolutely fascinating gota plug my dad in here had some friends over and just to mess around we asked him the definition of random words in the dictionary we opened it to the eyes and asked the definition of 10-12 letter 3-4 syllable words not only did he nail all of them but most definitions were verbatim when we got to the 10th word he goes the verb or the noun and we lost our crap it was seriously ridiculous we were freshmen in high school and could hardly pronounce the words we picked turns out he read the whole dictionary over the summer when he was 16 and bored guy is still the smartest person I've ever met I'm not even a dad but if I found out my son said this about to me I'd probably cry my older brother has really bad a DD and always did terrible in school I never realized how smart he was until a few years ago we were watching jeopardy together and he knew most of the answers to the most obscure crap I was blown away I swear it was like the scene from Groundhog Day when my dad just decided to add an addition to the house like he'd be out 70 80 hours a week adding three extra floors to the house with running water up to the third floor he would rent excavators and large moving equipment and only like three or four times he would hire an extra hand that was amazing lots off dad decide to do that but it sounds like yours actually completed it which is absolutely amazing wife is smart like six languages fluently smart without breaking a sweat it has never not done well in school always gets promoted e.t.c etc but no one in my family saw this because she's an introvert and tries to keep herself dumb so people get her and like her my family and I are smart she's next level up salut after we got engaged family had get together as in cousins friends lots of people as usual we played some group games she was reluctant but I pulled her aside and asked her to try and fit in she obliged but was annoyed with me started with pictionary she schooled the room moved to a bunch of card games with a single deck counted cards knew everyone's decks etc quiz board game knew all the answers over and over again she was dominant to the point of silencing my family it was unnerving even for me a few weeks later when we visited her family we don't play games with soon-to-be mrs. the Frog douche she plays to decimate the competition Oh found out my little brother age 12 has a legit photographic memory he's a big lotr fan and knows an abnormal amount about the series whenever he answers questions about it he looks up and squints a bit I asked him about it and it turns out that he is actually reading from the book in his head he can even jump to random page numbers he also knows a ridiculous amount of world history I go to him when I need help with that sadly he is adopted and we don't share the same games I'd like to be friends with your little brother I'd take him to parties with me just for the lot a trivia so I don't have to pull out the complete guide to middle-earth just kidding I don't get invited to parties put hardly any time into studying and do better an exam than me after I spend days studying for those of you who are like this and didn't develop any study habits I was in the same boat but I didn't have to study all through high school but once I got to college it bit me in the butt here's probably my favorite study tactic that got me out of that rut you ever had a test where professors will let you bring 180 X 11 sheet or even a nautical with anything you want to put on it formulas etc well I found that even if I didn't study anything else just taking the time to fill one of these out was very useful realistically you will use about 5-10 percent of what's on the sheet during the test but filling it out will make you navigate through your notes and/or class material and make you really think about what's important to be there due to the limited space while doing this you are subconsciously learning the material so even if it's an open book or closed notes test it is always useful to do something like this or at least it was for me I was a kid but I wish I wasn't by the time I got to university I had no idea how to properly study and my grades took a huge hit and never really recovered growing up your dad is always that nut at least mine was always thought of him as a joker who liked to invent stuff around the house long story short when I was around 12 he made a basic hydrogen engine he was on track to making it practical for his van and was so stoked claiming he would get up to 4 - 5 more miles to the gallon he was able to make a small hydrogen cell and a housing for it and set it in his van it was so complicated I can't even explain it properly he got 3-4 more miles to the gallon so his prediction was pretty close he was then stuck on how to get more out of it make it cheaper and you know maybe pitch his idea to get it on the markets one day he was googling new ideas and came across a Norse uni that basically did the same thing before him idk the details that had crushed him he stopped working on it kinda stopped making stuff a few years ago I was home visiting and was walking through his workshop and found the cell tucked away all dusty it dawned on me then that I will never come close to being as smart and intuitive as my father I told him before I left to my old man cried I cried it was great one of my best friends from high school was like a real-life Good Will Hunting story we came from a small blue-collar town his parents were relatively poor he was pretty much unheard of and unpopular but not nerdy or geeky more so hung out with the druggies and rock band types until he got to high school he started becoming fascinated with math and physics he would spend hours at the library just reading books upon books on the topics apparently he scored perfect or close to it on his AP exams and calculus and physics as a sophomore in high school our physics teacher at the school immediately took him under his wing and before his sophomore year was over he was teaching college math classes he went on to get his doctorate from an Ivy League school and of course as a professor now but he is definitely the smartest person I know we used to sit at coffee shops in high school and he would just start doodling long complex math problems on his napkin it was way beyond anything I could understand and I had taken all the same ap type classes he did holy crap I've always wondered how people just get good at that stuff it's like they have a giant vault only for that kid I knew in high school bet his friends who were in the class that he could get a 5 top score on the AP chemistry test even though he didn't take the class he did someone who doesn't engage with overdramatic argumentative people how's the saying go an idiot will bring you down to their level and win smart people just avoid it and know how and when to keep their mouths closed lawyer arguing in front of the Supreme Court he cites something in a law book stating it can be found on page 84 and one of the justices motions to a clerk to get the book the Justice receives the book and tells the lawyer that no such thing as found on page 84 the lawyer responds perhaps your honors addition is incorrectly paginate it it was my dad's friend Mitch I've only met him a few times but when I saw him a few months ago at my parents anniversary party he my birthday I thought it was just weird until he pointed around the room and told me everyone else's birthday too it was surreal my younger brother unfortunately has severe ADHD and other mental disorders he was kicked out of a couple of schools and has extreme social anxiety he gets really annoying and argumentative the dange I have seen that boy observed something for a few minutes be it a sport a dance move an equation something tech related an instrument and execute to near perfection after maybe three tries he sat down with my girlfriend to study algebra while he was in school and understood the whole chapter in few minutes he just needed someone to motivate him use their native language in fun and original ways like making conversations very colorful fun adjectives nice metaphors etc teachers of Reddit what is your this student is so smart it's scary story I once had a pre-kindergarten er who could read and cried because he was so upset with how dumb the rest of the kids were my mom would write little notes for preschool me and stick them in my lunchbox my teacher noticed I could read them and would have me read them to the class every day after that I cried but from embarrassment lol one of my kindergartners just knows multiplication and not just the basic 5s or tents in the beginning when his parents told me I played along with 2x2 or 10x10 but you can tell him 17 X 14 and he knows it instantly so cool to watch I had a student ask for an extension on their paper because they were representing our nation in the World Science Festival they came in third and the paper was an A+ now I don't have an excuse to keep putting off my research revisions I was doing a 500 piece puzzle with some kids I was a preschool teacher we finished the puzzle except for one piece which was nowhere to be found kid comes in takes one look at the puzzle on the table says oh are you missing that I know where it is reaches into another a completely different 500 piece puzzle rummages for like 10 seconds pulls the piece out citizen I asked him how he knew it was there he said he had done the other puzzle for a bit and noticed it I asked him how long ago Christmas he says it was February at the time kid was maybe five at the time might be more memory than intelligence but that was crazy to see such a great kid in somewhat dire circumstance I hope he's gotten all the opportunities he deserved five-year-old memory is the best memory I'm at the point where if I forget something in class where I put my keys what page we were on yesterday what color James colored his duck I just ask them they always know had a first-grader figure out exponents on his own that's just the way he was raised I work with 18 24 month olds and we have an 18 month old who can have little conversations perfect sentence structures perfect verb conjugation perfect pronunciation even Ellen Garr knows all the alphabets numbers colors shapes by sight some of the others know some of those things but I've never seen a baby this advanced I sometimes forget she's only one year old because she seems more like 3.5 just tiny like a one-year-old her dad brought her back from a well-baby checkup telling us that the doctor asked does she say any words yet and we all loved cause she has full conversations my son spoke in full sentences by 18 months reading by 2.5 could add subtract and multiply et Cie before preschool he's now 21 unemployed and spends all day playing games online still smart as though just lazy we had a four year old in preschool he was sitting under the table writing down numbers for a long time he had no time to talk to us when he came out and we looked at what he had been doing he said he wrote down all the multiplications it turns out his brother in five grade was learning the multiplication table and this little brother really wanted to do the same but did not have a multiplication table he counted on his fingers to add each column and got the table right a few days later he knew multiplication he would also comment on dates if someone told they had their they on the 12th of June he would say that is in 184 days almost immediately on an excursion we passed some statues with birth and death dates and he would casually sum up he was 78 years and 110 days old she was born 33 years and 120 days before him etc I think he was maybe more focused and willing to understand then necessarily so smart if he was right about the days that's definitely very smart for a four-year-old I'm 26 and can't even do that I taught high school math one of my freshman students divided 1134 by 63 in his head in less than a second I let him finish the problem and then after he arrived at his answer I asked him how did you do that he looked at me with this blank stare as if he was thinking you can't do that he proceeded to say well I doubled 63 and then multiplied that by 10 and then I saw that 1134 was just the difference of those two numbers so 18 looked at me like it was nothing I told him good work and moved on I'm only above average at a few things but one of them is mental math when I saw that this kid could do this calculation that I couldn't I was so happy it was one of my happiest moments as a teacher I didn't help him in that moment but to know I played a small part in his math education felt so good well I doubled 63 and then multiplied that by 10 and then I saw that 1134 was just the difference of those two numbers so 18 I feel so stupid because I can't even wrap my head around the explanation not a teacher but a proud big brother my baby sister was 5 when I came home from college for the summer after actually figuring out calculus and I explained it to her and she wrote it down in her journal yes she kept one from the time she was about 4 fast forward after she skipped a few grades in elementary school and she was taking calculus in high school and could not understand why it was so easy and reread her journal figured it out and called me laughing she has a PhD in high-energy physics and does research at CERN yet that staff desperately proud of her you did have one of the best kindnesses you could have made happen early stimulation of the brain really can have a kid go places later not a teacher but a kid in my grade ended up taking courses two years ahead of the rest of us advanced kids the funny part was that he skipped his own mother's class and wrote novels during middle school math he's published three books and currently has over 95% in every class I'm a piano teacher on the side teaching a four-year-old how to read sheet music before she can read books I ask her to find the season she will point then out on the page act she can also do math really well and understands the concept of multiplication also another student that just started and plays by Erin composes her own pieces at 8 she also speaks five languages which I didn't find out until I told her I was learning German after teaching her for three months she's already to the point where I had to send her to a better teacher kudos to you for recognizing that she needs a better teacher not many teachers do have an upvote I have a five-year-old this year who has stolen my wallet more times than I'd like to admit from my pocket without me knowing I now wear a wallet chain like I don't remember what decade it is he still tries but he hasn't figured out a workaround yet nah man he is even smarter than that now that he's trained you to be obsessed with the wallet and you think that's all he cares about - he's in the clear to start stealing other things check your desk there was once a kid in the grade above me in middle school that hacked the school database and deleted everyone's grades but he was expelled when I was in sixth grade a kid took down the school internet using a school of ministered laptop kid took the fat highlighters cut them open and removed the insides and replaced it with weed sold then at school he was caught but only because a kid snitched after they were caught getting high absolutely brilliant high lighters it's right there in the name my mum was a student teacher in the early 1970s she recounts the story of a gifted first grader that nobody really knew how to handle every day her mentor would give the child a copy of the New York Times and let him read during her class much later my mom was working as a speech therapist and had a severely autistic child that would come in daily after their lessons he would spend his free time drawing elaborate and accurate city maps on the whiteboard it was fascinating worked at a special-purpose preschool designed for kids on the autism spectrum did an intake day with a kid o4y oh where I was just trying to have fun and see what kind of things he liked did some time on the computer where we surfed around YouTube a bit he searched up a video about our solar system and began to explain to me the difference between the inner solar system and the outer solar system what they're made of sizes electromagnetic fields to compensate for distance from the Sun et Cie I had to Google everything he WS saying because I had no idea if it was true spoiler alert it was my seven-year-old son is on the autism spectrum and this is him with weather and sports I stopped questioning him because he was right and I wasn't for Christmas we bought him a bunch of books on weather and climate by new years he had memorized them all yet we can't get him to sir his math homework not a teacher we've had a classmate who was and still is a genius I distinctly remember him asking very complex questions on the current reading literature and making constructive arguments it was over my head but our teacher was offended and argued back that he didn't understand anything and or an overachiever I think they were over her head as well she screamed at him and stormed out of class and number of times there was a time she asked him to leave as well I never felt so bad for a classmate he didn't deserve to be yelled at like that I believe he's now a mathematician with published works and awards as well as a successful musician my mother told me a story once of a kid she went to high school with this kid was the local stone have been incredibly smart he was talking college courses way before everyone else saying they like ran out of math for me dog I have a student who is an immigrant that speaks fluent English I assume that she grew up in the USA she told me she had been here for a year and knew zero English before coming I was amazed I have another student who just does calculations instantly in his head he doesn't have to think when he learns more math just becomes automatic he explained that numbers just make sense the English thing is surprisingly easy as long as you take the right approach I came to the u.s. in the same situation as a 12 year old I just kept for watching movies and series I had seen in my original language and was fluent two years later I had a kid who could take one look at a national flag and then point to the corresponding country on an unlabeled world map instantly now I think that kids spent too many hours playing grand strategy games I'm not a teacher I'm a student that one of my classmates just has so much random crap memorized ask him about anything like the Crimean War how to build a combustion engine random useful bits of information about bands from the 70s as well as being an excellent student and every single subject he's also managed to teach himself Cyrillic soar whatever that Russian alphabet thing is and can speak Russian pretty well despite never having taken a class of it's in his life idk it's just nuts he's so good at so many random things I teach kids with autism that learn on the alternate curriculum usually lower level academics and have cognitive delays I'm always amazed that while they might struggle in one area the strengths they have I had one girl who knew everyone's birthday everyone she met day month year and age she could also do crazy math in her head I have another kid who is minimally verbal but knows every locker combination in the school to others who are amazing artists another who could tell you what eight is movie icon shared a birthday with you love my kids former school aid here I once had a very tiny lad surprise me for typical development would be learning basic alphabet recognition and first sounds towards word forming however he took some play clay and mater and pan plan claim planet planets across the table and wandered off again her kids were kept deleting itself on a computer every few minutes he was having a meltdown and I saw it happen it was impossible to explain the phantom deleting that was going on fast forward to the end of the class and there's one kid remaining that was sitting at the opposite computer from the kid who lost all his work he looks at me and says you want to know how I did sir he had put in a USB keyboard into the back of the computer and had it set up so he could hit the Delete key with his big toe it was the funniest stealth attack I'd seen in a long time being the teacher I should have done something that it was too funny and smart my friend took the AC T when we were in seventh grade and got a 31 I don't know how because they don't teach you half of that material until high school heck of a guy though would intentionally get questions wrong on really difficult tests so he wouldn't kill the curve for the rest of us wish the smart dudes in my classes were like that had a classmates in my American government class in a community college about nine stroke ten years ago our teacher gives three questions for you to pick one of them to write about for the test an essay format but you get the question about a week or so to prepare you to study your subjects question most people write an average of five eight pages during the test this guy writes around 20 pages give or take even the teacher was dumbfounded he did this for every test in this is a three term class you don't have to take all terms or even take it order if you happen to do all three yes he got hazed he wanted to get into politics I heard of overachievers but WTF who does that since I'm not a teacher either my mom was a very average student didn't try very hard and was not planning to go to college back when she was in school they used to administer IQ tests a couple of months after she takes an IQ test the school calls my grandparents and says we need to talk about your daughter everyone is like Oh Lord what did she do now they both go to the school and the principal sits them down your daughter has an IQ of 140 but she's failing algebra we think you should send her to a psychiatrist my grandfather was livid he took off work for this no she never saw psychiatrist and she didn't go to college but she's pretty smart IQ doesn't exactly measure how smart you are but your capacity to learn I had a first grader with a speech impediment who was asking for a type of book his peers and I couldn't understand him no matter how hard we tried finally he gave up and without any frustration he found a picture book with someone stirring a pot on the cover he opened the book and skimmed through words until he found what he was looking for the word cooking he showed me the book and pointed telling me that was the word he had been trying to say he wanted a cookbook this was a six year old six dang kids can be freaky when they memorize specific stuff but that kind of thinking is incredibly intelligent you have been visited by the healthy spirit of exercise boy you will burn all calories today if you comment blessed be the heel found if you are new to the channel you can subscribe I publish new videos every day until then check another video or don't either way have a great day you magnificent people [Music]

Channel: Updoot Studios

Views: 100,681

Rating: 4.7137175 out of 5

Keywords: #updootst, updoot, updoot reddit, updoot everything, reddit on tap, toadfilms, pewdiepie, reddit, askreddit, funny reddit, reddit stories, top posts, reddit top posts, reddit cringe, comedy, reddit compilation, /r, r/, r/askreddit, top posts of r/, askreddit reading, best reddit posts, top posts of all time, people of reddit, askreddit question, ask reddit, subreddit, sub, reddit smart, reddit smartest person, reddit smartest students, reddit smart student, reddit smartest

Id: eS40uvDvEx0

Length: 68min 28sec (4108 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 29 2019