Just this once

I don't want to pile more misery on this man's family, but seeing the story about a man in Riverdale, Maryland (one of those DC suburbs that might as well be in Hong Kong for all we know about it in Baltimore) who decided that it was a good time to take a smoke break as he pumped gas, and was killed in the resultant fire, makes me think about a lot of things people do that, if they took .3 seconds to mull them over first, they would not do.

In the non-fatal category, let's talk about how, in six months or so, the guy who got the KFC Double Down Sandwich tattooed on the back of his calf will wish he had not done so. A Double Down Sandwich is bacon, Monterey Jack cheese and "the Colonel's sauce," sandwiched between two 100% white meat Original Recipe® filets. That's right.  Instead of bread up and down over the bacon and cheese, they substitute chicken filets, and even as tasty as this concoction might be, is it something you want permanently on your epidermis?

Tattoos are not a crime, but ankling out of a restaurant without paying for your chow is. An officer with the Lakeview PD in Texas was chasing a guy who ran out of Gabacho's Mexican Restaurant, and suspected he was in a nearby vacant building. Entering through an open door, the officer called out "Marco!"

Police arrested the suspect after he responded, "Polo."

And of course, Brian Williams will remind you that smart people will not only do a dumb thing, but will also decide to keep riding that pony all the way to oblivion.

Again, not to trivialize the sad death of the man at the gas station, but unless this was a suicide, he paid a mighty high price for doing something something many people do dozens of times per day. Just like taking a chance and passing a slow truck on a blind curve, or jumping from roof to roof, you might get away with stuff many times, but there's always that once.

Pain of Glass

And mistakes can act like the tiny little time pills in Contac cold medicine.  Stephen Glass was a young man doing very well in journalism until it was revealed that one of the reasons for his early success was that he just plain made stuff up...people, companies, quotations, events: stories he presented as fact were all fiction. Disgraced, he went to Georgetown law school instead, but twelve years after graduation, he is still barred from passing the bar because the lawyers in both New York and California don't want him and his past prevarications around them.

In other words, they feel that admitting him to their ranks is not a mistake they wish to make.