Educated Idiots

When her father died, the simpleton from next door waddled over and told Nerissa she had been given ‘first refusal’ on the sale of the house.

Nerissa, with more degrees than a thermometer, looked at the simpleton certain that what she said was true; after all, how could Mrs Dopie dare to lie to her?

When Daddy’s lawyer approached saying he had two buyers for the house, Nerissa flipped him off, explaining the ‘first refusal’ Daddy had given Dopie.

Nerissa, trusting Mrs. Dopie, gave her the keys, and went to the city where she now lived. Dopie moved her entire ratbag of family into the big house.

After a few months, when she didn’t hear anything, Nerissa rang up Mrs. Dopie who told her about getting a mortgage, and how these things take time.

A year after Daddy died, a school pal of Nerissa wrote her an email about Dopie turning the house into a tenement yard.

Nerissa, upset, realised she had been duped by a woman whose I.Q. she would have put at half her own.

She had Dopie removed and her school friend suggested a nice young couple as tenents.
 
Nerissa did as her friend suggested.

Another year passed, where the rent was sporadic, and obscured by the offer to purchase.

At this point, two years after the death of her father, Nerissa contacted Daddy’s lawyer.

The young couple offered less than half what the house had been worth when Daddy was alive. And then, alas, the bottom fell out of  the housing market, the young couple could not purchase, and left the house.

Daddy’s lawyer was now given custody of the sale, and of course, couldn’t find a buyer for anything near the value.

Out of desperation, Nerissa, who herself felt the credit crunch, begged the lawyer to sell it for what he could.

Three years after Daddy died, the house was sold for less than a quarter of the value it had held, the value Nerissa could have received, if she had not believed Mrs. Dopie.

This is not a fiction.  This is standard.

If you think you are so brilliant, as Nerissa did, and if you believe that those who are less educated can’t fool you, you have just been scammed.

Mrs. Dopie had nothing to lose.  If Nerissa had grown a brain and appreciated that word of mouth could not effect a land transaction, Dopie would have shrugged and waddled back to her house.

Nerissa, confusing the ability to pass exams with intelligence, assuming that those who were as educated as she was, (or more so) could not be  trusted, and those who needed to take off their shoes to count over ten, could, she lost pots of money.

Educated idiots are the easiest marks.

Believing in their brilliance and everyone else’s stupidity they can not get their minds around the fact that the Mrs. Dopie’s of this world can think rings around them.

Never confuse academic qualification with intelligence.  And always remember, those like Mrs. Dopie have nothing to lose. Those like Daddy’s lawyer, do.