Over the years, people have done countless stupid things.  You could fill a blog documenting such things and never run out of content (and I’m sure somebody is trying).  Albert Einstein supposedly said, “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not even sure about the universe.”   I’ve also heard it said that “the 2 most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.”  I’m not going to argue with that.  I suppose stupidity is limitless because imagination is limitless.  Some people use their imagination for good, while some people use it to invent new ways of being stupid.

The reason I’m thinking of that is because of something I heard in the news this week.  A woman in Michigan hurt her shoulder trying to keep her 80-pound Labrador from fighting with her Chihuahuas, and she was unemployed and couldn’t afford to get health care because she had no health insurance.   The pain supposedly became too much to bear, so she became desperate.  The hospital wouldn’t treat her unless it was an emergency, so she borrowed a gun and shot her shoulder, so the hospital would be required to treat her.  On TV, she said she figured this would be better than the pain she was currently dealing with.  Before shooting herself, she put pillows in front of and behind her shoulder, along with an ice pack.

Her plan backfired, though, because the bullet missed all of the affected areas, so the doctors in the emergency room didn’t have to work on her previous problem.   So now she has the shoulder pain and a gunshot wound to deal with.  Afterward, she said, “It didn’t take the pain away.  I figured it would take the pain away from the rotator cuff, where at least I could focus on something else, and maybe they would fix me, you know.  I guess I should have shot a little lower and got the bone and the artery.”  I’m not sure she learned her lesson…