There are an increasing number of things in this world that I just do not understand. Take for instance one recent morning when I was scanning Hagerstown’s Herald-Mail and came across this headline: Fire does $25K damage to Smithsburg goat shed.I don’t understand how it’s possible to do $25,000 worth of damage to a “shed” of any kind. Perhaps, the goats who lived in that shed are among the more affluent goats in the greater Four-State area. Had the headline indicated that there was $25.00 worth of damage to the goat shed, then I wouldn’t have had a second thought.  The article actually states that the building itself, which sustained $20,000 in damage “was not a total loss.” I would have thought that $20,000 in damage would have wiped out every goat shed in Washington County. The article also notes that there was $5,000 worth of damage to the “contents” of the shed and that does seem reasonable. I mean, if you’re a goat and your shed is worth upwards of $20,000, then you’re not going to furnish it with end tables from Wal Mart.

The night before I read about the goats, I was in the living room when our daughter Sarah began watching a show called Catfish. I thought that it was nice that Sarah took an interest in the great outdoors, except the show wasn’t about fishing. It’s about these guys named Nev and Max who go around helping “people who are emotionally entangled with someone they have never met in real life,” according to Wikipedia. This is as incomprehensible to me as a $25,000 goat shed. Apparently, however, and again, according to Wikipedia, a “catfish” is “a person who creates fake personal profiles on social media sites using someone else’s pictures and false biographical information to pretend to be someone other than” himself or herself. I can understand that. If I spent $25,000 on a goat shed, for example, I wouldn’t want people to know who I really was. I wondered at which demographic this show was aimed and then on came a commercial for DeVry University followed by one for The General Insurance.  Apparently, the show’s demographic consists of people who have time enough to create fake Facebook profiles because they are neither working nor could they get to a job if they had one because they have no car insurance.

Finally, there was this sign that I spotted in the drive-thru at McDonald’s:

I was under the impression that both sight and the ability to read were prerequisites for obtaining a driver’s license, but perhaps not. And if these menus are for passengers, are you telling me that the driver, whom we’ll assume can both see and read, is so mean that he won’t read the menu to his blind or illiterate friend? I am tempted to drive through one night and explain that my passenger is both blind AND illiterate and that he needs the braille picture menu just to see what the response would be.

I have a Facebook friend who I bet would don sunglasses and participate in the joke.  Of course, this friend is a goat. At least, I guess he’s a goat. I’ve never actually met him.

A goat in sunglasses. Or maybe it’s a catfish.