Dictionary Use Gone to Pot

My dad yesterday recounted a story involving a friend (of my dad's generation) who professed both unfamiliarity with the word 'cannabis' and an inability to find that word in a dictionary -- two odd bits of cognitive incapacitation that rather ironically suggest a robust familiarity with the substance in issue, if not its designation.

Anyway, this got me thinking about basic dictionary-using competence. Seems like if you weren't good at using a dictionary, you'd have a need for a reference work, say, "Dictionaries for Dummies." But then given the very incapacity in issue, you'd need another reference work for that, ostensibly "'Dictionaries for Dummies' for Dummies." And so on. This obviously leads to a pedagogically vicious regress. Turns out, then, dictionary illiteracy is irremediable.

As a corollary, it is impossible that you are comprehending this post at all.