Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Zipper Accidents (4 page)
Read Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Zipper Accidents Online
Authors: Uncle John’s
EXCERPTS FROM ACTUAL INSURANCE CLAIMS
GARFIELD HATES MONDAYS, VETERANS
L
et’s face it: Life is hard. Everyday you’re forced to wake up and do a whole bunch of things.
Thousands
of things. Most are relatively simple, like breathing or finding a pair of matching socks. But too many of these tasks are fraught with peril: pulling out of your driveway, merging into traffic, and trying to do so while texting, for example. (Also: finding a pair of matching socks.)
So it goes.
Thing after thing after thing must be done, and you’re not allowed to screw up even one of those! But, inevitably, you do. We all do. Thankfully, most errors go unnoticed. But some people’s goofs make the evening news. Or the history books. It’s then that these little moments of embarrassment get shared the world over, leading all of us to look on, shake our heads and remark, “What a shame,” and then “I’m sure glad that wasn’t me.”
That’s what
Zipper Accidents
is all about: We call out the all-time biggest screw-ups…so you can feel better about yourself. Consider it our gift. So happy reading…and don’t forget to look where you’re driving while you do.
—Uncle John and the Bathroom Readers’ Institute
A
n elderly English woman purchased a EuroMillions lottery form in 2010, brought it home, picked her numbers, and gave it to her husband to turn in. And, as she always did, she wrote down her numbers on a piece of paper. A few days later came the big announcement—all her numbers were drawn! She’d won! One problem: Her husband had tossed the ticket into the garbage bin. The couple would have won £113 million ($181 million).
•
Martyn and Kay Tott bought a National Lottery ticket in England in 2001. Watching the news a few nights later, they heard that the jackpot of £3 million was still unclaimed. Then the newsreader delivered the numbers, and they were the numbers the Totts always played. The couple, celebrating their first wedding anniversary, were thrilled and poked around for their ticket to millions—but they couldn’t find it. Ultimately, the 30-day time limit on lost tickets claims came and went. Three lengthy legal battles ensued; the Totts won none of them. The stress over the gain—and immediate loss—of millions strained their marriage, and the couple split.
F
ifty-one-year-old William King was in a Tampa, Florida, hospital in 1995 for the amputation of his right foot, which had became gangrenous due to complications from adult-onset diabetes. Just before he went under the anesthesia, he joked with medical staff, “Make sure you don’t take the wrong one.” Guess what happened? The doctors amputated his healthy left foot, and spared him the gangrenous right one.
King ultimately had to have
both
legs amputated below the knee, and he received a hefty settlement. The hospital where the mix-up occurred, University Community Hospital, instituted a new practice to ensure the same mistake wasn’t repeated: A medical professional had to write “NO” on all limbs not slated for amputation. This procedure, simple yet amazingly effective, has been adopted at thousands of hospitals around the world.
“THE DOCTORS AMPUTATED HIS HEALTHY LEFT FOOT, AND SPARED HIM THE GANGRENOUS RIGHT ONE.””
P
atriotism surges before and during the Olympics, especially when the Olympics are on home soil. That was the climate in 1984 as the Los Angeles Summer Games approached. McDonald’s capitalized on America’s Olympic fever with a massive promotion called “If the U.S. wins, you win!” Whenever a customer bought certain food items, they received a scratch-off game piece emblazoned with an Olympic event—if an American won a medal in that event, the customer won a Big Mac (for a gold), fries (for silver), or a soda (bronze). McDonald’s wasn’t worried about having to give away too much free stuff because in the 1976 Olympics, the U.S. won 94 medals; the Soviet Union won 125 and East Germany won 90.
But then, just weeks before the Games were to begin, the USSR announced a Communist boycott of the 1984 Olympics as payback for the U.S.-led 1980 boycott. The USSR sat out, as did traditional powerhouses like East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. With its major foes out of the way, the U.S. had a much clearer path to Olympic glory, and made good on it, winning an astounding 174 medals, 83 of them gold. The U.S. won, consumers won, but the big loser was McDonald’s, which lost tens of millions giving away food it didn’t think it was going to have to give away.
L
ouis Dethy was a 79-year-old retired man living in Charlerois, Belgium, in 2002. He lived alone, having alienated his large family—his wife and 14 children—through infidelity and refusing to forgive
them
for not forgiving him. In 1998 he lost a legal battle over his mother’s will, which left Dethy’s house (which she had owned) to one of his daughters. Essentially facing eviction from a family he had come to see as the enemy, Dethy decided to booby-trap his house—if he couldn’t keep it, he’d kill them all before he let them have it. He hid 20 shotguns around the house that would fire if triggered: one over a crate of beer bottles that would set the gun off when emptied, one on a chest full of cash in the cellar, one on a water tank, and even one on the TV. To make sure he didn’t shoot himself first, Dethy wrote himself tons of coded notes and riddles and stashed those around the house, too. Nonetheless, Dethy accidentally set off one of the guns and shot himself. A military mine-clearance team had to be called in to rid the house of the other 19 firearms… and Dethy’s body.