BARK UP A WRONG DOORBELL

I would love to share with you some of the wackiest reasons I’ve found for people being arrested or running afoul of the law. It makes me laugh which isn’t easy since I was struck by lightening while playing the steel drums.

Here are some of my favorites:

*Melvin, from Idaho, was arrested after he assaulted his mechanic. Seems the guy told him that he couldn’t repair Melvin’s brakes so he made his horn louder.

*Dorothy, who lives in New Jersey, was fined for playing whist with a plate of chives. That’s against the law in Newark.

*Harry was arrested for poor personal hygiene. He had so much dandruff that when he shook his head it looked like a snowstorm in Buffalo.

*Ida was fired and fined a month’s salary from a telemarketing firm when it was proved that she couldn’t sell a blood clot to a hemophiliac.

The reason so many people find themselves in trouble is that they are not conversant with many of the obscure and out-dated laws still on the books. Many of the statutes were written by Cotton Mather and his “merry band” of hangman. Let’s face it, most legal scholars, judges and lawyers can’t even lift the dusty and arcane tomes containing these long forgotten rules. I’m sure that somewhere in some spider-webbed law library there’s an ordinance which makes it a capitol crime to watch re-runs of CSI Dubrovnik.

Case in point: An Amsterdam family found themselves between and rock and a hard place with Dutch authorities. No, they weren’t observed sticking anything in a dike – although their lesbian daughter does like her vibrator. They were handed an 80 euro ($97) bill for the Dutch dog tax. In the Netherlands, dog owners are required to pay the “hondenbelasting” an infamous annual tax. Hey what’s good for the goose is good for the Giant German Schnauzer. Only one problem; this family doesn’t own a dog. They have a barking doorbell.

It was the second year in a row the family had a run-in with authorities over their doorbell, which plays 15 different barking noises. “Last year it was a huge effort to convince the inspector that we didn’t have a dog, and now it’s happened again.” Suspicious authorities thought the family was trying to pull a fast one and watched from an apartment across the street to see if they took their “doorbell” for a walk or bought lots of kibble from the grocery.

Why would a family have a barking doorbell? To keep away unwanted solicitors or neighbors wanting to borrow a spare wooden shoe? Although both those reasons are acceptable the reason these Dutch “fruitcakes” have a barking doorbell is in honor of the family’s German shepherd which died several years ago. Can you imagine what their doorbell would sound like if they had a pet elephant?