It can always get worse

Sorry for my French leave.....I've been living in a WTH delirium as of late, thanks to the dumbass that ran a stop sign and wrecked my beloved car on the way to work on Monday. I'm more or less okay - (the more or less depends on how many pills I've taken to address the ouchiness of my back/neck/spine/ribs) - but I suspect the real headache is just beginning.....insurance and the like.

Anyhow, this story cheered me up....sort of. More to the point, it reminded me that no matter how unpleasant things can get, they can always get worse. Case in point: this woman in Kansas has been sitting on a toilet seat for two years. No, that is not a typo. After 1 year and 11 months, her boyfriend calls the sheriff to report that "something is wrong with his girlfriend." Ya think!!?? Um, she had been there for so long that her skin had grown into the plastic seat. (This, in a yucky but funny way, reminds me of the iconic tongue on flagpole scene in the holiday classic A Christmas Story...)

When the po-po arrived, the woman insisted "that she was OK and didn't want to leave" - if your definition of OK includes having atrophied leg muscles, mental disorientation, open sores on your ass, and a toilet seat stuck to your posterior, then I suppose she was right as rain. Luckily for Kansas (a state that loves to teach creationism in public schools....go figure), the wisdom of the police prevailed and the unfortunate woman was whisked away to the hospital, toilet seat still hanging from her derrière.

Now the sheriff is recommending that this woman's boyfriend be charged, although it isn't exactly clear to me what statute would apply here. The boyfriend insists that he tried to cajole her out of the bathroom each and every day, and her reply was always, "Maybe tomorrow." (Paging Scarlett O'Hara...)

The most disturbing part of this case - aside from the obvious - is the comments made by some of the citizenry. "She obviously wasn't keeping herself up," the sheriff notes with stunning insight. But the creepiest comment of all comes from a long-time acquaintance of Toilet Woman. "It really doesn't surprise me," her friend Ellis says. Uh.....um......I may be jaded, but not that jaded, because this story rates pretty damn highly on my what-the-hella-meter.