Friday, May 27, 2005

A finger in the Wendy's chili

Truth is stranger than fiction.

We are all familiar with the infamous Wendy’s chili case, where a woman took a finger and placed it into a bowl of chili:



By the way, they finally found the finger donor, and arrested the perp, all with national media attention.

Now, I’m not complaining, but the Wendy’s Chili jokes were all-over the networks, but the media ignored an even better story, right here in North Carolina. In this North Carolina case of not giving the finger, a man in a custard shop breached common courtesy by refusing to return a man's finger because he was saving it for evidence in a lawsuit:

The piece of index finger was found earlier this month by Clarence Stowers in the dessert he purchased from Kohl's Frozen Custard in the coastal town of Wilmington.

Stowers had refused to give it to the shop's owner or a doctor who was treating 23-year-old Brandon Fizer, who accidentally stuck his hand in a mixing machine and had his finger lopped off at the first knuckle.

Stowers put the finger in his freezer, taking it out occasionally to show to television cameras.

Let's imagine, step-by-step, exactly how this happened.

OK, Brandon is making frozen custard. He sticks his hand in the mixer and lops-off a whole finger joint. Now, at this point Brandon would be screaming bloody-murder as blood gushed from his finger, (which remains inside the bowels of the giant seven foot tall machine) while pints of blood pour into the vat.

If I’m reading the story right, while Brandon is screaming and his co-workers are calling 911, they decided to go-ahead and serve this batch to the customers (after all, it was chocolate).

Then, Clarence feels the finger in his mouth, and he thinks that it's a Jack-in-the box prize. Despite pleas from Brandon, the ambulance crew and police, Clarence declares “Finders Keepers” and takes Brandon’s finger home with him, putting it in his freezer for safe-keeping. . .

Some folks say I being naïve’, that this story is too implausible to believed, but I can see it happening.