Children Reveal The Exact Moment They Realized Their Parents Are Stupid
When we’re little, we tend to think our parents have all the answers. That’s why it can be a tough pill to swallow to find out that they actually don’t. What’s even tougher is figuring out that your mom or dad might have a few screws loose up there—they may be missing some common sense, logic, or even general intelligence.
Not everyone is a genius, and you certainly can’t pick your parents. But it’s one thing to be smarter than your parents, and a whole other thing for them to be stupid. Sometimes, their intellectual faults are endearing. Other times, their ways of thinking are so outrageous you want to scream. If you’ve ever found yourself living with parents who are terminally stupid, know that you’re not alone.
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#1 No Amount Of Explaining Could Have Worked
I asked my mom for the Super Mario All-Stars game on the Super Nintendo for my eighth or ninth birthday. She had no idea what I was talking about, so I explained what the game was. For those who may not know, it had all the original NES Mario games, Super Mario World, and one other Mario game that I think was previously unreleased.
The SNES was still new, so games were expensive, but that was literally all I had asked for. A couple of weeks went by and I didn’t really think much about it. On my birthday, I came home from school to a big wrapped box, much bigger than the game. I tore into it and opened up the box to find an old Nintendo. Next to it were cartridges for the first three Mario games. I was so confused. I thought I had been so clear with my request.
Mom: “It’s exactly what you wanted!”
Me: “…it is?”
Mom: “Yes! I took your Super Nintendo to the swap meet and traded it in for the games that you wanted!”
It’s been over 20 years and she hasn’t gotten any better.
#2 Maybe She’s Book Smart
Every Friday, my mother goes grocery shopping. It’s a block away and she usually drives there. On this particular day after she finished shopping, she decided to walk back. The next morning, she woke me and my father up to let us know her car was stolen. The cops came, we filled out paperwork and in the meanwhile, she got a rental car.
That’s not even the best part. The following Friday, she drove again to the grocery market and parked right next to her “stolen” car, which was a champagne-colored Mitsubishi Diamante. She commented on how similar the car looked to hers but made nothing of it. A few days later, the cops called us to let us know the car was in the grocery store’s parking lot one block away.
#3 And That’s How You Dig Your Own Grave
My dad crashed his car at 8 a.m., on his way to work, because he was surprised at a naked woman streaking across the road. When the police turned up and asked what happened, he explained that he ended up crashing as he wasn’t sure if he really just saw a naked woman, or if he was still tipsy from the night before. And that is how he lost his driver’s license. Oddly enough, there was a naked woman, AND he was still tipsy!
#4 The Internet Runs On Normal Business Hours Only
In high school, our grades were posted online. My dad wanted to check on how poorly I was doing. I told him the internet was closed because it was after 5 p.m. He actually believed me. That gave me enough time to go into my account settings and change my password so he wouldn’t be able to access my grades. He eventually found out, but still… I can’t believe I almost got away with that one!
#5 Flat Earther, Say No More
My dad is an anti-vaxxer and a flat-earther. He thinks he’s very smart (a good example of the Dunning-Kruger effect). He’s also very stubborn. He got into an argument with my brother and me about whether it was possible for us to travel faster than the speed of light and other physics stuff. His reasoning was, “They did it in Star Trek, it can happen in real life.” Not joking.
#6 The Miracle Of Mount Rushmore
After leaving Mount Rushmore, my mom was unusually quiet. I asked her what was wrong and she said it wasn’t what she was expecting. She said it was impressive and all but she was a little sad to learn someone had carved the faces into the mountain rather than finding it that way naturally… I couldn’t help but laugh.
#7 Fundamentally Misinformed About How The World Works
My stepdad saw one of those tear-jerker commercials about starving children in Africa. He proceeded to rant about how there were plenty of animals to hunt in Africa for them to eat. He was literally shouting at the TV: “Eat! Just eat!” I had never seen a more ignorant man before. Then again, I guess I can’t blame him—he wasn’t lucky enough to go to school as a younger kid.
#8 Never Let Dad Play With Fire
Years ago, I was building a potato cannon, which my father was uninterested in, thinking it was just stupid… until he saw me working on it in the garage. I had the cannon in the vice and I had just put in an electronic barbecue igniter that I wired to some bolts inside to get a good spark. Suddenly, he got very interested. I just managed to get a perfect gap and he said, “Wait, let go of the button for a second.”
He sprayed Quik Start (basically aerosol ether) and said, “Okay, hit it now!”Nothing happened. Both ends of the cannon were open, so it was just a tube and the Quik Start he sprayed, dissipating in seconds. “Okay, hold the button for a sec.” I was not even thinking about what he was about to do at that moment—he aimed the spray right at the live arc and created a fireball that came straight for his face, burning his one eyebrow and corner of his mustache. I can’t imagine what he thought was going to happen.
#9 One Word: Priorities
They gave my college fund to a preacher so he could send bibles to Nicaragua. A strange man knocked on their door one day and gave this whole spiel about how he was on a mission to spread the faith and help the poor communities heal through prayer. My parents, being rather devout, was so moved by his story they offered him my college fund to help him out. Despite promising to get back to them on his progress, he never did—he just disappeared into thin air… with my college fund.
#10 Some Common Sense Would Do Her Good
My mom said she just couldn’t figure out why my aunt didn’t like her. She had borrowed $100 from my aunt to buy us food and instead bought on adult beverages with all of it. She later stole another $20 from her to buy a DVD, then hit my dad in the face with a frying pan. I was six years old at the time and even I could figure it out. The fact that she was a grown woman and genuinely had no clue just proved she was incurably stupid.
#11 When Being Gullible Becomes Dangerous
My mom once got a scam call on her home phone. The callers were speaking to her in English. It’s important to note we’re not from an English-speaking country, but I lived abroad in an English-speaking country for a while, so I knew the language. They told her that her computer had a virus and that she had to give out her information etc. She believed them, but thankfully she told them that they were probably looking for me, as I worked with computers and spoke English. I’d never been so happy about this coincidence. It could have gone very wrong.
#12 A Question For The Ages
My mom asked whether World War I or II came first. Enough said.
#13 Mexico, The 51st State Of America
She was fully convinced that the country of Mexico was made the 51st state of the USA in the ’60s. No, she was not confusing New Mexico and Mexico. When faced with reality, she said that it was a widely taught fact when she went to school in the ’70s. I told her I found that hard to believe and she got really upset with me.
#14 The Case Of The Missing Son
My parents are well educated, but this was one of the stupidest things I’d seen them do. I was in the basement playing video games and went upstairs at some point to my parents frantically looking for me. They were in that anger-relief kind of state and told me they’d been looking for me for hours. They were even about to call the cops.
Here’s the thing… I had my phone on me the entire time and had received no calls, texts or messages from either of them. Also, none of them ever went down to the basement to check if I was there, otherwise they would’ve seen me. I couldn’t have really left the house either because I wasn’t old enough to drive at the time. I don’t know what was going through their minds but it definitely wasn’t common sense. I would’ve loved to see the police officer’s face if they actually came.
#15 Some People Will Never Understand The Internet
My mom wanted to drive to the new Google office building to complain about her Yahoo email account. I wasn’t able to convince her that they are two different companies, unfortunately. She stormed off and I went with her in case she needed help. The person she talked to kept saying she couldn’t help her since Google did not manage Yahoo email accounts. My mom then asked to speak to a manager…
#16 Conspiracy Theories Got The Best Of Her
My mom got mad at me for getting a flu shot. Apparently, she thinks the government uses them to track and poison people. I was 30 years old at the time. I’m all for a good conspiracy theory, but that one was ridiculous. I have a history of getting pretty sick during flu season, so this was something I felt I actually needed. Too bad, mom.
#17 Throwing Money Down The Toilet
My mom received a large inheritance, used it to remodel her house that she hadn’t yet paid off, then took a line of credit out on it months after the housing crash. It was the stupidest thing I had ever seen someone do with so much planning involved. It took months for the dumb plan to happen and I tried to dissuade her every step of the way. It’s one thing to put a fork in an electrical socket, but it’s a totally different thing to hire a carpenter to build a house, hire an electrician to wire it, go to target to buy a fork, then put it in the socket.
#18 Memory Does Not Work That Way
My dad introduced me to someone I’d never met.
Dad: Do you recognize this person?
Me: No.
Dad: But… she held you when you were a baby!
#19 A Serious Brain Fart
I was at dinner with my parents when my mom started feeling really unwell. We took her to the emergency room for chest pains and she was diagnosed with Type-2 diabetes. The physician was asking my mom about her family medical history and if anyone had diabetes in her family. My dad, a little tipsy, asked if his family history would affect her. They’re obviously not blood-related. The physician just looked at him for a few seconds and then said no.
#20 She Lives In Her Own Fictitious World
My mother is the living embodiment of the phrase, “I reject your reality and substitute it with my own.” She once proclaimed that she didn’t have to file taxes because she was a widow. When we pointed out that she could get audited, she then doubled-down and said that the IRS only audited businesses, not people. Not sure where she got that logic.
#21 Always Google Your Symptoms For The Most Accurate Diagnosis
My dad once told me he had pancreatic cancer. I asked, “What stage?” He said Stage 3. I was devastated. Later on during the day, I asked my brother, “Dude, why didn’t you tell me he had cancer?” My brother had the most confusing look and said, “He doesn’t have cancer… He’s been on this diet he saw on TV that consists of rice and vegetables. He’s been eating like 1,000 calories a day for the past few weeks. He Googled his symptoms on WebMD and he thinks he has cancer.”
#22 Drive-Thrus Can Be Pretty Tricky
One night, my dad went to the McDonald’s drive-thru and spent a solid three minutes talking to the trash can. He started getting angry because it wasn’t responding. I told him, “Dad… that’s not the speaker box. You talk into that little thing over there.” Immediately, his face turned bright red. He knew he had messed up.
#23 Bigotry Or Stupidity?
My father insisted that there is a gay vaccine. That’s when I discovered he might have been homophobic. Just a tad.
#24 Maybe Dad Is Secretly A Robot
My Dad sprays WD-40 on his elbow to loosen it up. All I can do is shake my head.
#25 Science Shmience
My foster mom doesn’t believe in depression and thinks I’m addicted to my antidepressants. She caused a huge fight two years ago on Thanksgiving because she saw me take a pill bottle out of my glove box and pop one in my mouth. Surprise, it was my antidepressants. Earlier that day, she commented on her biological son’s dependency on pills too, saying, “If you need it to get through the day, then you need it. Nothing wrong with that.” Or something along those lines.
When we discovered my brother had been doing harder substances for some time now, she compared the addiction he developed to my “addiction” to my antidepressants. I don’t know why or how, but something made her believe that depression wasn’t real and my pills were going to make me an addict. Meanwhile, my brother (her biological son) dropped out of high school when we were 16. Did I mention she’s a registered nurse?
#26 One Man’s Foil Is Another Man’s Christmas Gift
This one is double sided because it simultaneously showcased how smart and dumb my dad is. Basically, he fell for that online iTunes gift card scam. You know, the one where your friend’s emails get hacked and you receive a request from “them” asking you to buy these gift cards and mail them to whatever address. Well, at the time an organization my dad was on the board of was hosting a big giveaway and the email he got came from another board member.
He assumed he was picking up prizes for this giveaway. However, because my dad is a moron, he didn’t follow all the instructions of the email. He bought the cards and then texted his coworker to ask what he wanted to be done with them. His coworker called my dad an idiot and explained the scam he had just fallen for.
THIS IS WHERE IT GETS GOOD. My dad knew that if my mom found out he had spent $400 on gift cards, he would be sleeping in the kennel with his hounds for at least a month. He also knew that if he didn’t tell her and she found out some other way, his fate would be even worse. So he partially fessed up. He told my mom he fell for the scam with a, “Haha, I’m so stupid” look on his face, but told her each gift card was for $25 bucks.
So she said, “No big deal, we’ll give them to the family for Christmas.”So after I had been presented with my “$50” in iTunes cards, I was silently pulled aside by my dad and told: “There’s actually $200 on each card. Merry Christmas and for god’s sake, DON’T TELL YOUR MOTHER!” A mentally challenged genius, that man is.
#27 Not Everyone Knows About The Intricacies Of The Body
When I first starting to use tampons, my mom was incredibly confused. She had been using pads her whole life, so she could not for the life of her figure out how tampons possibly worked. When I gave her the laydown, she was genuinely shocked—I didn’t understand how she grew up not knowing about tampons the entire time.
#28 Stupidity Can Get Dangerous
My mom and dad brought me home from the hospital while I was still on morphine from an ovarian cyst burst and left me in the bathtub alone because I demanded a bath. No one checked on me even once and I couldn’t stay awake or move well on my own from all the pain medication they had shot into me so the water overflowed, I nearly drowned, and then got yelled at over not keeping an eye on stuff and flooding the bathroom and hallway.
#29 Wrong Wall, Mom
My cousin showed me and my mom a picture of himself standing on the Great Wall while he was a foreign exchange student in China. My mom looked confused and later told me: “I thought they tore that wall down?” I told her, “I think you’re thinking about the Berlin Wall.” She nodded her head vigorously saying, “No, I’m pretty sure it was the Great Wall.”
#30 Genes Are Passed On Through Marriage
When I was a young kid in elementary school, we did a family genealogy project. My mom told me that we were part Cherokee. Not a lot, just a little bit, due to a family relative from a few generations ago. Being a kid, I thought it was super cool and didn’t really ask any more questions. Fast forward to high school—my mom proved that maybe she isn’t always the smartest bulb in the box.
One night we got on the subject of relatives. She mentioned at one point, “Your grandfather’s brother married a Cherokee woman.” I sat there for a moment finally realizing how dense she really was. I collected my thoughts and as nicely as I could point out, I said: “Mom, if grandpa’s brother married a Native American… that doesn’t make us Cherokee. Genetics don’t work like that.” She just stopped and stared at me for a good while and moved on.
#31 All Hail The Magic Of Technology
My mother was resisting mobile phones for a very long time, but eventually, she gave in and got one. Obviously, a lot of things were new to her, and the rest of our family helped her to understand this weird and wonderful thing now in her hand. Pretty quickly she was able to grasp text messaging, and I would occasionally send her pictures, upon which she would always respond:
”I can’t view pictures on my phone. It works on dad’s phone, send them to him.”
Time went on, and the same story. Sometimes we would talk about it, and my mom would say that she and dad had been trying to figure the whole thing out, but to no avail. One day, maybe one year after my mom first got her phone, she called me and exclaimed: ”I can view pictures on my phone now!” Very excited! I asked her how they managed to figure it all out and she said: ”Well, you know when you get a picture message, you can’t see the picture, just a grey box… Well, if you click on the box, the picture opens up!!!” I died a little on the inside. Bless my mom, she’s honestly such a character.
#32 Nevermind All The Other Bad Things Happening In The World
My parents don’t believe in climate change because “God wouldn’t harm his own creation.” Nevermind all of the wars, the famine, and the outbreaks of violence that go one every day under God’s watch. I am not against religion by any means, but there are just some beliefs that go completely against what’s rational and that bothers me.
#33 Racism Sure Is A Confusing Kind Of Stupidity
My aerospace engineer dad refused to shake my friend’s dad’s hand because the man was dark skinned. The confusing part is that he was born in raised in a highly multicultural city, so it wasn’t like he was culture-shocked or anything like that. I guess there are different kinds of intelligence. Some people are blessed with a lot of one and none of another.
#34 That’s Not How Faxing Works
Whilst in university, I was on the phone with my father one day and said I had to get to school early because I ran out of paper. He said, “Why don’t I just fax you some blank pages?” I didn’t say anything and after about five seconds he said, “Oh… right. Okay, have a good day at school so you don’t end up like your old man.”
#35 Only Half-Brainwashed
My mom, a staunch Catholic, once casually said to me, “You know—if I were born in the middle east, I am sure I’d be Muslim.”
“… So you are saying that religious beliefs are an accident of birth?”
“No, I was born a Catholic because Catholicism is the one true religion.”
#36 He Likes His Version Better
My dad used to say, “It’s a dog-eat-dog world!” I would try to correct him to no avail: “It’s dog EAT dog!” One time, I was at a pet supply store and found an actual sign that said, “It’s a doggy dog world!” It probably only helped to validate his misunderstanding, but we found it hilarious to give that to him for his birthday.
#37 Not Exactly A Geography Whiz
My mom legitimately believed Alaska was an island, purely because of the way it is pictured on American maps. We were talking about how long it would take to drive to Alaska and she said “Wait, you can’t drive to Alaska right? Is there a bridge or something?” I just stared at her. I don’t think geography was ever my mom’s strongest subject.
#38 She Allowed It Anyway
My mother thought that the people I game with on Xbox and PlayStation weren’t real people… She assumed I was in my room talking to my computer for five years. She also started to get worried because she thought I had no human friends. It got to the point where she suggested I see a counselor about my loneliness. No mom, I’m not crazy, and I’m not lonely either.
#39 If She’s Never Heard Of It, It Doesn’t Exist
My mom and I like to go explore the many trails in our town. We even have a map detailing each trail. One day, we were on a walk around a lake when my mom pointed on the map and said we were getting close to the “island part of the trail.” I looked at the map because I didn’t remember seeing an island on this particular lake.
I tell her, “Oh, you mean the peninsula?”
She said, “No, the island.”
I explained to her there was no island on this lake and defined the difference between an island and a peninsula. Well, I tried. We got into a huge argument over it. She had never heard of a peninsula; she was so confused, to the point that she thought we were lost. She stormed off, determined to find the trail around the island. I told her okay, enjoy your swim to the imaginary island… She gave up on finding the “island on the map” but it was clear she still did not understand. I couldn’t believe it.
#40 Don’t Believe Everything You See On The Internet
My dad stopped eating ketchup. When asked him why he stopped, he sent us a video of ketchup being made in the factory. One of the ingredients they used in the video to make the ketchup was a street substance. The video obviously wasn’t real, but he completely thought it was. To this day, he’s wary about eating ketchup because he still thinks it’s made with that substance.
#41 Thanks But No Thanks
When I was in fourth grade, my mother insisted on helping me with my homework for some reason. I was always a smart kid—I never needed help but she forced me to let her. She proceeded to redo my math and spelling homework and I failed both assignments. I told her the answers she corrected were wrong and she fought me on it.
When I got to school, I cried and told the teacher my mom made me put the wrong answers. The teacher laughed, took my paper and asked me the questions. After I got two right immediately, she smiled and said, “I know a way we can get through to your mom.” She marked everything on the page wrong and gave it back to me. She told me not to worry, she put 100% in the grade book; she just wanted me to show that one to my mom.
#42 Flying Above The Moon In An Airplane
Mom: “Once, we were flying on a plane and you were asleep. I wanted to wake you up because we were flying so high that when I looked out the window I was looking down at the moon!” Yes… my mom thought we were flying above the moon. She thought our plane had left the Earth’s atmosphere and flew to outer space.
#43 It Is Possible To Accidentally Poison Your Family
My mom was setting up rat traps. She spooned some rat poison out of the box and then some peanut butter with the same, unwashed spoon to make the trap enticing. Makes sense, right? She then used the SAME JAR of peanut butter, with rat poison in it, to make us sandwiches. Just as she was preparing them, my dad walked in, saw what she was doing, and immediately jolted towards her. He immediately took the plate of sandwiches from her and started yelling. She didn’t see what the problem was. I’m not sure how I survived into adulthood.
#44 She Lives In A World With No Time Zones
My mom lives in France and I have been living in Canada for the past three years. She never seems to remember that it’s six hours earlier here. She ALWAYS calls me in the middle of the night and acts shocked to learn I was asleep. IT’S BEEN THREE YEARS MOM. There are things called time zones! How do you not know this??
#45 Driving On The Sky Would Be Cool Though
I once attempted to explain how we actually see everything upside down and our brain just flips it the right way subconsciously. My dad then said, “So like… cars would be driving on the sky?”
