We all know that one person whose lack of common sense makes you worry for their safety and wonder how they’ve made so far in life. I once had a roommate in college who called our landlord and complained that the washing machine was broken because the clothes kept coming out wet. Apparently he had never washed his own clothes before and assumed the washer was also a dryer. That same roommate once put his pet goldfish in a giant martini glass full of water, set it on the kitchen counter, and left for the whole summer. When he came back months later, he was shocked to find that his goldfish had died. «What were you thinking?» I asked. He said, «I thought goldfish didn’t need to eat. They’re fish.»  Academically, my roommate was a pretty smart guy. But even someone who is fluent in five languages has the potential to be dumb as hell. 

Twitter user @PallaviGunalan’s anecdote about their own hilariously incompetent roommate sparked quite a thread of similar accounts of times people were incomprehensibly foolish.