One of the most dismissive evaluations my mother dispensed (to me and to others) was, "that one has a really firm grasp on the obvious." Loaded with derision, this comment was never meant as a compliment. Rather, she meant that the object of her scorn failed to meet her standards of perceptiveness or abstract thinking.
More recently, however, I have come to think that having a "firm grasp of the obvious" is not as common as I once thought. And you know what else? It's probably not such a poor quality to have in a person.
When we are around people with a firm grasp of the obvious, we learn that the king has no clothes, not new clothes. We may learn that the alarm is not a drill, and we should in fact leave the premises immediately. Obviously, a firm grasp of the obvious isn't such a bad thing after all.
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