Illiterate Ph.D.s

Yesterday, somebody in my building took my copy of the Wall Street Journal. I know someone took it because it was in the hallway waiting for me when I left for the gym, but when I returned it was no longer there. So I used my tightly honed powers of deductive reasoning to conclude that someone took it.

Now, it's possible they were confused. Apparently the guy who delivers the paper to us can't walk thirty feet down the hallway, perhaps because of some affliction to his lower appendages (although were that the case he perhaps would have chosen a less mobile profession), and instead merely tosses the paper out of the elevator and doesn't care where it lands. Sometimes it lands in front of someone else's door. Sometimes it barely makes it out of the elevator. It has never made it in front of my door. So maybe that's why someone took it.

Maybe someone saw the paper on the floor and said to themselves, "Hmmm, isn't it nice of the building to leave this copy of the Wall Street Journal just lying here for anyone to take. Hey, I like to read! Maybe I'll read this paper!" Or maybe they said to themselves, "Hey, perhaps in a drunken stupor I accidentally ordered the Wall Street Journal to be delivered to my hallway, and even though I can't remember doing it, I'm going to pick it up and read it anyway!"

Except the problem with my little hypotheticals, which might seem reasonable to the casual observer, is that they neglect a very salient fact: the person who picked up my paper mistakenly cannot possibly know how to read. How do I know this very important and what might be considered highly improbable piece of information?

I know this because if they could read, they would have seen the big fat address label that does not have their name on it.

The kicker, of course, is that every single apartment on my floor has at least one Ph.D. living in it. It baffles the mind that, in an entire floor of Ph.D.'s, there lives someone who is not capable of reading an address label.

Either that, or one of my neighbors is a gigantic douche.