Baseball Bat Theory

I was sitting in my very first college class. It was considered the engineering "weeder" course at my school. Lots of calculations. Lots of mass, moments, forces, free-body diagrams. All of us were (not-admittedly) scared. All except one. This one student was very quick to make his presence known. You know the type... Asking off-the-wall, quasi-pertinent questions to elevate his own ego every time the prof took a breath, all the while making the rest of our eyes roll. And, in the end, he wasn't actually all that successful in the class. All of his energies went into his BBT (Baseball Bath Theory) behavior.

Fortunately, I was sitting next to another student who would become a best friend. He told me that there is always one person in a group who everyone else wants to beat with a baseball bat.

Here are the requirements. The person must:
(1) utilize inopportune times to display knowledge
(2) be completely unaware of social cues
(3) be shouldering some secret incompetence

I cannot take credit for the content of this theory, only for adopting it and actually labeling it as a theory. Because I've tested it. It always holds true. In high school classrooms, in middle school classrooms, in business meetings, on teams. I have shared BBT with fellow teachers, colleagues, and, most recently, a friend taking some prerequisites for grad school. Everyone has been able to identify with it. If you can't... you know what that means. :)