Those of you who have read my blog for awhile may remember the “duh” threat I issued (“Calling Out Idiots”) in regard to comments. Up to this point, I’ve never had to use it, which may be because the readers who stuck around get what I’m writing or it may be because most people simply stopped leaving comments out of fear. Well, the time has finally come to leave my first “duh” and it goes out to Marie‘s response to “A Family That Smokes Together, Stays Together (Until The Kids Rat ‘Em Out)”. Since this is the first “duh,” I’ll explain:

In the post, I wrote that I was curious about the fact that the 23-year-old man was referred to as the father rather than the stepfather of the 11 and 12-year-olds. And Marie wrote, “Well if the oldest kid is 12, it means Carlson, who is 11 years older, could ¤technicaly¤ be the father…”

I can understand that some people might think such a complex mathematical equation might be a challenge for someone who attended the Unversity of Hawaii (“You can’t spell ‘duh’ without ‘UH’”). I’m aware that it’s not the most difficult school to get into. Other colleges require extensive forms and essays. At UH, you can call in your application and they ask one question: “Is Hawaii one of the 50 states?” As long as you answer either “Yes” or “I’m not sure, I was absent that day,” you’re in (I threw them a curveball and said it was the 51st state after Washington D.C. They didn’t know how to verify it and put me in the accelerated program). So I admit I went to a crappy school but there’s a calculator on my cell phone, which helped me determine the father’s age at the time of the oldest child’s birth.

I also attended public schools growing up, which means I may not have been properly educated in biology. But, like most red-blooded American idiots, I read the gossip rags and am aware that Mary Kay LeTourneau became impregnated by a 12-year-old boy. My trusty calculator showed me that 12 is one year older than 11, which is a pretty short time frame and therefore I gathered that an 11-year-old boy could possibly reproduce.

That all said, it was never a question of whether the man could be the biological father, I just found it unlikely and wondered if the omission of the “step” was because he actually was their biological father, if he was their adoptive father or if it was just because the reporter was a graduate of UH’s journalism program.

But thanks, Marie, and congrats on receiving the first “duh.”