Our local highway generally parallels, or overtops the historic Iditarod Trail. Various and sundry constabulary patrol the nearest thirty miles. Now I don’t know how you’d prove it without being earmarked a significant percentage of Obama’s stimulus to fund the finding out, but I’d bet dollars to—er, donuts—that, per capita if not mile, our breed up here choffs down more of those confections with which cops are so identified than any other of their brotherhood anywhere. No contest.

Last Sunday, as our family motored toward church, ahead at a pullout right beside the old trail, the red lights of a patrol car flashed. Rubbernecking in passing, what did we observe but that, incredibly, the officer had pulled over what we recognized to be the long familiar, plain-black, undercover bane of the disobedient and unwary who flaunt or forget the law along these local miles of the Iditarod. Now its driver had his eyes closed, frowning. My first thought was that we were witnessing a rare occurrence, the police-world equivalent of a citizen’s arrest.

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Now in truth, even when you become gray enough to at least look experienced and smart about life in the great outdoors, and although you’ve grown too cautious to indulge in most idiocy on purpose, it’s still inevitable that you’re going to make a lot of pretty dumb mistakes, i.e. do dumbstuff. Therefore, if you’re a truthful person, you’ll need to look true to yourself. For that you needs learn to achieve a really good dumbguy look. I can’t think of anything more honest. Looking the way you usually look masks your real self and deceives people. Think about it.

I have to tell you, my bride reacts in utter disgust when the boys and I put these on. Why, she wonders, would we—the two eldest are professional professionals and supposed to be and act adult and dignified—why would we take the faces God gave us, and make them look so moronic? If she’d only hear us out, the boys and I might explain that our dumbguy is actually our natural state—the way we’d look all the time if we didn’t keep our game face on to appear normal around her, at work, and in public.

Christopher Lloyd, playing Jim, on Taxi, knocked down a fair semblance upon occasion. But with his drug-fried brain, Jim wasn’t quite capable of greatness. In other words, Jim was too dumb to do a great dumbguy. David Letterman tries. At least he appreciates the look and even identifies it as a dumbguy. But bar none, the best dumbguy ever was that of comedienne Tim Conway. Essentially, what you’re after is Tim Conway after a lobotomy.

OK, what’s needed are precise instructions. I have the definitive list. Followed exactly, they guarantee you’ll look your dumbest.

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My kids are more than familiar with an adage I’ve repeated ad infinitum and ad nauseum. Especially out in the fastness of the Alaska Bush and even more in winter, it’s equal parts essential advice and command: Don’t Do Dumbstuff!  Out there, accidents, flubs and stupidity can precipitate serious consequences. Way far from 911 and other support systems, peril is compounded. The old, experienced, careful  trailsman preaches it so much to these babes in the woods that they’ve not only reduced it to an acronym—DDD—but added two Ds of their own: Don’t Do Dumbstuff Dad Does.

Now I suppose when the kids know their dad has leaped astride a wild moose for a joyride, and called bears to point blank range just to see the look on their face when he leaped up to reveal that he wasn’t really the wounded baby sheep he’d been imitating, and ran rapids in a crude log raft that had killed eleven people using sophisticated whitewater craft in the preceding thirteen years—or thirteen in eleven—and had done so many other wild and crazy things on purpose, not to mention the many stupid mistakes he’d committed that could have gotten him killed or worse, well, I suppose that saddles his attempts to be taken seriously with some credibility issues that tend to undercut the message, try as he might to get around them by explaining that all those things took place when he was young and dumb like they are.