or at least take a long coffee break.

You know, a couple of years back we had this guy. A student. A student at the second-best university (of two!) in the area. And…how to say…not exactly the head of the class.

Now, students at this university, they have been known to get themselves into trouble, the way students do. They can do it particularly easily as this particular university is situated on top of a mountain which is home to both bears and cougars, as well as the mountainous terrain which comes from, yes, being on a mountain.

So, one night after the pub, he decides to save himself the two dollars and twenty-five cents a bus would cost (and the hour and a half it would take out of his life; those suburban buses are few and far between, and once you catch them they wander like Albion’s lost sheep, and at approximately the same pace) and hike down the mountain.

Cut to the darkest hours before dawn dawn…and Bubba here is stuck on a ledge, the last foothold for fifty or sixty feet, and he manages to flag down some help from the local homeless community or perhaps just passing nocturnal mountain bikers, and the mountain rescue team comes and rescues him.

Cut to a month or so later, on nearby Mount Seymour. It’s a ski hill, so Bubba has been enjoying a full and athletic day of mountainside activity, but apparently no challenge he has met today has proven sufficiently…challenging.

So Bubba goes off-trail.

Now, to my European friends, this won’t mean quite as much. I mean, you throw a rock in Switzerland, it’s damn well gonna hit somebody when it comes down, and that somebody is probably Bono ferchrissakes. In Canada, things are somewhat different. If you go down the wrong side of Seymour, you are in a deserted mountain valley and you could shoot off cannons without anybody hearing you.

Cut to several hours after dark, when Bubba is located by the trusty and intrepid Mountain Rescue team, on yet another cliff, toes frostbitten and weeping profusely. Not the toes, Bubba. The toes don’t start weeping until they thaw out, and that’s when it gets really gruesome.

Bubba lost a couple of toes, and several thousand dollars when he was charged for the cost of his own rescue. And he gave them to understand in minute detail just how outrageous was the expectation that he would be held financially responsible for the consequences of his going into the clearly marked Out of Bounds zone, which consequence was only levied because it was thought by the powers that be that Bubba should have surely learned his lesson the first time.

Cut to several weeks later. Yet another mountain cliff. Yet another Mountain Rescue team on yet another mountain rescue expedition, rescuing yet another Out of Bounds skier encounter…

Bubba.

Oh, they rescued him alrighty. But they were in no hurry to radio for that helicopter, they told the pilot they were in no hurry for him to get there, they were in no hurry to winch Bubba up, and they spent all the leisurely (6 or 7) hours this gave them in taunting Bubba with how stupid he was.

Even stupider: once they’d rescued him, he threatened to sue, and THAT was when the two provincial newspapers printed his full name and home town.

All of which is a longwinded way of suggesting that the 911 rescue teams in Worcester, Mass, are taking their responsibilities waaaaaaay too seriously. I tell ya, guys, a strategically-timed “coffee break” is all it takes to train the stupidity right out of a maroon like this one.

Jancura climbed inside the safe and his cousins locked him in it. They were able to get him out because the code to open it was left nearby.

Then he went in again.

This time, the wrong code was accidentally entered and the safe locked down, trapping the boy inside.

I’m sorry, but I’m just not seeing the problem here. As long as you don’t let him out, he constitutes no threat to the quality of the gene pool.

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