Get stupid.

I've got a buddy like this. The only difference is he "gets" what people are talking about, but fakes he doesn't, in order to send people into an apoplectic fit and frustrate the shit out of them. [Hi Jr!]

HARDCORE ZEN: GUESS I'M DUMB:

"...I find it remarkable how I'll say something, then someone embellishes what I've said with their own imagination, then that person proceeds to comment upon the stuff they've imagined as if I said that stuff. That's such a weird thing to me.

...I'm just wondering how much trouble we human beings cause each other by reading into things, by embellishing what we hear and see with our own invented details and then acting upon what we've invented. A great blessing/curse in my own life is that I'm too stupid to do that to any great degree. I mean if you intend to insinuate something to me, watch out because I probably will not get what you're driving at. Stuff has to be spelled out really clearly.

One thing that's helped in my practice has been that I no longer try as hard to figure out what people "really mean" when they say something to me. I just take nearly everything totally at face value. I don't usually "get" sarcasm, for example. I can tell when people are using it. But more often than not I have no idea what they're implying with it. And I won't usually put in the necessary effort to try and work it out.

I think Zen practice tends to make you more like this over time. I've noticed my teachers do it even more than I do. You develop a kind of dumb approach to life."