Important Health Warning

Caution: Look Before You Sit…

I thought that I should point out to you that there is a guy out in Colorado that claims that having your rear end glued to a toilet seat causes nightmares and diabetes.

You heard me right—mixing super glue, porcelain, and your butt cheeks together can cause your pancreas to stop making insulin. I wouldn’t believe it myself if I hadn’t seen the story in the news with my own eyes:

Denver-A man who sued Home Depot claiming a prank left him glued to a toilet seat in a bathroom said Tuesday he's willing to take a lie detector test to dispel any doubts about his story.

Bob Dougherty sued the home-improvement chain last month, alleging employees at a Louisville, Colo., store ignored his pleas for help after he got stuck on a restroom toilet seat in October 2003…

The lawsuit said Dougherty, 57, was recovering from heart bypass surgery at the time and thought he was having a heart attack.

Dougherty said he suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome, nightmares and diabetes after the incident.

"It's not about the money. I want my health back. I want to be back to normal," he said. "I want to make sure this doesn't happen to anybody ever, ever again."

Don’t get me wrong here because I don’t mean to make fun of Mr. Dougherty, I just want to warn everybody of the potential health hazard this represents and demand that the government and perhaps the American Medical Association get to work spending a few million dollars doing some research on this phenomena.

If it is true, this is serious stuff. I’m afraid that I’m going to develop some kind of bathroom phobia unless the medical “experts” and my government “officials” don’t step in and reassure me a little.

What is even worse is that apparently Bob has had this problem before:

The Rocky Mountain News reported Dougherty made similar allegations in his hometown of Nederland. Colorado Bureau of Investigation records show Dougherty pleaded guilty to filing a false police report in 1976, something Dougherty said he did not remember, KUSA-TV in Denver reported.

Ron Trzepacz, former director of operations in Nederland, where Dougherty lives, told the News in Tuesday's editions that Dougherty came to him in the summer of 2004 claiming he had been glued to a toilet seat in the town's visitor center but pulled himself free.

Trzepacz said he inspected the bathroom and found "no indication that anything had been on the toilet seat." He said no police report was filed. Trzepacz, who now lives in Franklinville, N.Y., did not immediately return a telephone message left by the AP.

Dougherty called Trzepacz's claims "nonsense" and said, "I don't even know the guy."

Dougherty's lawyer, Mark Cohen, said his client was willing to take a polygraph test.

"The allegation (by Trzepacz) doesn't make any sense," Cohen told The Associated Press.

I just had a horrible thought.

Maybe it’s not diabetes and post traumatic stress that we should be worrying about. Maybe Mr. Dougherty has developed some kind of rare medial condition—a condition that causes him to secrete super glue from his ass cheeks. How horrible it would be if you could never sit down with a book or newspaper in the restroom again without fearing spending the rest of your life there glued to the seat.

Wouldn’t a remedy be to just go ahead and glue your own toilet seat to your own ass and just live with it 24/7?

You could have custom tailor made pants made to fit, and wouldn’t it be great if you could have a special seat installed in your car that would eliminate having to stop in rest areas on long trips?

There is some hope for our safe restroom future, because if you read a little further you learn that “it really is about money:”

Dougherty's suit against Home Depot, filed late last month in Boulder County District Court, seeks $3 million. It claims he suffered pain, humiliation and financial loss.

OK, I’m through fooling around here.

The REAL reason that I mentioned this story in the first place is to say that I believe that we need to make a fundamental change to the tort laws in this country.

If we changed the law so that the LOSER PAYS the cost of the winner’s legal fees in these type of lawsuits, most of this kind of stupid crap would be eliminated.

Fingers in Wendy’s chili, old ladies scalding themselves with McDonald’s coffee, self-adhesive toilet seats--where does it all end?

If firms like Home Depot knew that they didn’t have to settle out of court to avoid the risk of spending MILLIONS of dollars on lawyers defending themselves against the allegations made by idiot morons like Bob Dougherty, they could do a much better job selling me cheep lumber and paint.

Don’t you agree?