Neff Zone Column

Print Edition: January 28, 2006

YOU CAN’T MAKE UP THIS STUFF: VOLUME 6

OK kidlings, here’s yet another edition of "Big Rob’s You Can’t Make Up This Stuff," the game based on my brother’s theory that reality is stranger than any fiction you can conjure up.

Big Rob sent this from the Flint Journal: Kendrell Pugh has been suspended from school 55 times in the last five years. His recent offenses include: 11 suspensions for insubordination, 11 for disrespect, five for fighting, three assaults on other students, and repeated violations of school rules including truancy and tardiness. Last week he called a principal "dawg," loitered in the bathroom during class time, and hit an assistant principal. Said Pugh, "School is a big issue for me, I love school, but I don’t want to go somewhere where I feel like I’m not wanted." Earth to Kendrell, perhaps if you quit smacking the administrators and mugging your fellow students school would be a more welcoming place. Some might say you’ve already gotten 54 second chances. Now you need to get a clue.

While some, like Kendrell, go looking for trouble, others have trouble thrust upon them. Like Dawn Higgins of Easton, PA who didn’t want the lettuce on her McDonald’s hamburger so she tossed it out her car window assuming since it was biodegradable it would "go back in the ground." A police officer didn’t share her recycling theory and issued her a littering ticket which resulted in a $173.50 fine. Dawn plans to appeal the ruling and plans to bring a salad to court as evidence.

The judge may want to confiscate that salad because it could be nothing more than part of a clever jailbreak plan. To wit, Robert Cole was serving a sentence for armed robbery in New South Wales, Australia and while in custody underwent a dramatic weight loss. In fact, he got down to 123 pounds, slim enough so he could slide through the bars of his prison cell and has yet to be recaptured. The longer he remains "at large" the greater the chance his description might "grow," so police are baffled.

If Cole decides to continue his chosen profession of as a robber, he may want to steer clear of the home of James Erb of Williamsport, PA. A thief broke into Erb’s house and Jim’s parrot, Sunshine, attacked the man and pecked him so violently that the thief fled the scene leaving Sunshine with its victim’s blood still on its beak. Police picked the burglar up later, hands and arms bloodied, with holes consistent with those made by an enraged parrot.

If Erb wants to reward Sunshine with a cold beer, they should head over to Westerville, Ohio where last week a pizza parlor was the first local establishment to legally serve a beer since 1875. The town’s last "saloon" was blown up 131 years ago and then the National Anti-Saloon League made the city its national headquarters in 1909, hence the dry status. The pizza parlor owner held an auction to determine who would consume the first beer and the winning bidder paid $150 for the honor.

If anyone deserves a beer, however, it might be Brian Lawson of Chimacum, WA who ordered an Internal Revenue Instruction booklet by telephone. What he was after was a single copy of the Form 1040 Instructions for 2003 to help him straighten out a numerical error. What they got was a UPS delivery of twelve boxes containing 24,000 booklets of Form 1040 Instructions for 2005. Wait, it gets better as more government agencies get involved – the booklets somehow arrived at the correct destination even though they were mistakenly addressed to Chimacum, D.C. instead of Chimacum in Washington state. Hold the phone, I’m not done yet. Lawson called the IRS to alert them to the mistake but the IRS would not return either his calls or those from a local newspaper. Then the next day UPS called Lawson – you guessed it already, didn’t you – and told him another 24,000 booklets had just arrived at their warehouse.

Ahhhhh, you just can’t make up this stuff.

Jim Neff is a local columnist. Comments to neffzone@gmail.com. Read Neff Zone columns online at www.neffzone.com/cadillacnews.