By Jim Schuh

Two months ago, I presented a column on stupid people.  As uncharitable as it seems, from comments I’ve received from readers, they agree with labeling some people as “stupid.”

So I pass along more examples of stupidity.  My wife, Martha, recalled an instance from her years as a physical education teacher in elementary school.  One day, a student brought a note from her mother asking that the student be excused from activities that day.  The note read: “Please excuse (student’s name) from class today because she has a bone in her leg.”

How about the woman who applied for a job at a jail in New Hampshire?  When the folks who do the hiring completed a background check on the applicant, they found she was wanted on a theft charge in Maine.  Her would-be employers arrested her and put her in jail.

Another woman who faces jail time is the St. Petersburg, Florida resident who called 9-1-1 and told the operator she had an emergency.  When paramedics arrived, she told them she needed beer.  They declined, so she called again a few hours later with the same request.

Police say she’s called the emergency system 28 times in the past three months.  They charged her with misusing the emergency system.

My sister, who volunteers at the Traveler’s Aid desk at Milwaukee’s General Mitchell Field, offered this one: “Stupid, stupid woman at the airport today.”

She said somebody found a wallet in the concourse with some cash, a driver’s license and 26 credit cards and brought it to the desk.  “We paged the woman.  She had a Delta ticket agent call us from the gate where she was waiting to board – with two hours until her flight departed.

“She wanted us to bring the wallet to her, but we explained why we couldn’t.  She said, ‘You mean I have to come all the way back to get it,’ and we said, ‘Yes.’”

She came to our desk but was complaining about having to go through security again.  She also grumbled again that someone should have taken it to her instead of keeping it behind security.

My sister finally told her how fortunate she was that someone turned the wallet in.  She didn’t seem to care that she got it back intact.  My sister’s take: “Imagine contacting 26 credit card companies and the DMV.  Idiot!”

We know someone who works in a bank in the Twin Cities.  She told us about the young man who stopped by, perplexed because of a notice from the bank that he had insufficient funds in his checking account.  The bank employee tried to explain the situation to him, but he couldn’t understand why he was overdrawn.  After all, he said, he still had plenty of checks left.

As a child, older folks cautioned me about getting out a vehicle to snap a photo of a bear.  I recall two instances when I got that warning while on trips to Michigan’s Upper peninsula when our family pulled up at a garbage site at dusk to watch the bears come out of the woods to feast on leftovers.

Staying in the car when bears are nearby is still sound advice.  But some people ignore it – like the man in India on his way home from a wedding.

He stopped for a toilet break and noticed a bear nearby.  Despite warnings from his companions, this fellow decided he wanted a “selfie” photo with the animal.  He approached the bear, but it charged him and mauled him to death.  His companions recorded the event on their cellphones – from the safety of their vehicle.

As dumb as the victim was, he was not the only person to die in India because of bad judgment.  The Hindustan Times reported other instances when people died while attempting to take selfies.  One fellow died posing in front of an oncoming train.  Another drowned when his boat tipped over at a picnic; another died in a fall as he stood on a cliff that gave way; yet another met his demise when he fell from a slippery edge of a canal, and finally, there was a tourist who attempted to take a selfie at the Taj Mahal in India.  He fell down the steps, suffering fatal injuries.

For some reason, Indians trying to take selfies are more prone to die.  Over a two-year period, of 127 deaths worldwide resulting from snapping selfies, 76 happened in India.

I looked online for a few more instances of stupidity.  Here’s a good one: a woman sitting in an office cubicle kept asking the fellow next to her for correction fluid, nearly driving him mad.  She said she needed it for her computer monitor.

This fellow had to be a finalist for the Darwin Award, which commemorate those who improve our gene pool by removing themselves from it.  He was at a shooting range when his gun jammed.  He looked down the barrel to see what was wrong.

But this is my favorite – a couple was having sex in the back of an SUV along a Russian lakeshore.  But the driver had left the vehicle in neutral instead of park before moving to the back seat.  The couple’s “motions” sent the vehicle into the deep lake where the pair drowned.