Witz DOESN'T Pick: "Look Mom, No Hands!"

I was in Palo Alto recently and visited the Stanford campus. I think you can learn a lot from simply watching the students on a campus and seeing how they act outside of the orientation, the campus tour, the accepted student lunch. Stanford told me a lot.

You see, Stanford is a smart school. They have high standards, nearly impossible admittance, and a lake on their campus. A lake. Anyway, you gotta be pretty good and chock full o' stress to get in. On top of that, everyone I saw was wearing California Prep clothing, looking good and sporting tans to boot. So I was wary straight off.

Thirty minutes later, the true Stanford had revealed itself to me. And here's why:

In the span of thirty minutes, I watched as FOUR bikers went past me...with their hands off the handlebars. Now this alone has always struck me as incredibly unnecessary and extremely show-offy. Unless you're in 4th grade and riding with your buds (and possibly sporting a helmet that must be offset by cool bike tricks), there is no reason to ride without your hands. It's a bike-- there are handlebars there for you to REST your hands on. Do you not rest in the leaning forward style that humans evolved from? Who the eff feels the need to stand straight up rigidly, while your arms jiggle awkwardly at your sides while you pedal? EXCESSIVE. But that's not what I saw. Oh sure, I saw the "look mom, no hands" kids, but they were doing something else too. Four bikers all were riding with their hands...in their pockets. They had their hands off the handlebars, ok, and then they put them in their pockets. I watched as these kids of all different race and look rode around, even taking turns without touching the handlebars. I wasn't impressed. Quite the contrary. All I could think was "Who the fuck needs to do that??" Why add that element of stupid danger to your life? They weren't even holding anything. Just riding. One kid WAS reading a book, and I never had more of an urge to just take a step to my left and lay the kid out into the bushes. I mean, if you don't see that coming, you didn't have a childhood. But somehow, I resisted the urge (possibly because that's assault) and walked on to see even more bikers riding with their hands in their pockets.

But here's the thing-- aside from all the ridiculousness of the act...it can't even be comfortable. While you ride, your hands must get pushed around and pinched. Pockets function on a perpendicular axis from legs while riding a bike. So it is either to show off, or to discreetly touch their genitals while they ride. Either way, I can only make one judgement:

Stanford students are IDIOTS. The whole "smart school" is a hoax. Maybe it's so tough to get into because they need to find the people with the highest SAT scores who show the most promise to fall in love with Stanford, put the school into their will, and then die in a blatantly avoidable accident. IDIOTS!

Witz