Farking Ridiculous

It's now officially true: No good deed ever goes unpunished.

Last summer in Durango, Colorado, two teenaged girls decided to do something nice for their neighbors. Instead of going to a dance one night, they decided to stay home and bake homemade cookies for their neighbors. They then left them on neighbors' porches with red and pink construction-paper hearts that read, "Have a great night". In order to surprise their neighbors, they would leave the cookies, knock on the door, and run.

(Kind of like the old 'burning sack of dog poo' trick, but nicer.)

Anyway, one woman was apparently afraid that she was being robbed or something, and had a panic attack that the said she thought might have been a heart attack. She spent the night at her sister's house, and ended up going to the hospital for treatment the next morning.

(Durango must be a very neighborly place if the burglars there typically knock first.)

(And you know, if I ever think I'm having a heart attack, you can bet I'll be sure to get to a hospital quickly. You know, 12 hours after the fact, or something like that.)

When the girls found out what had happened, they and their families apologized and offered to pay for the woman's medical costs. The woman refused, opting instead to take them to court and sue them for the medical costs plus punitive damages.

The judge ruled in favor of this woman, and fined the two girls $930.78 for medical costs.

(Sure, it sounds asinine, but in all fairness, it must be said that the judge did choose not to award the woman any money for pain and suffering.)

Fortunately, the girls ended up not having to part with a cent their own hard-earned cash -- which they probably won't be spending on construction paper or cookie ingredients any more. Denver radio station 850 KOA News raised nearly $2000.00 from listeners, which more than paid the girls' fine. The rest was donated to a fund for Columbine High School victims, incidentally.

But that's not the end of the story. The father of one of the girls has recently obtained a restraining order against the husband of the woman who sued his daughter. The husband has allegedly been making harassing phone calls to the girl's home.

Meanwhile, the woman in question is complaining about how badly everything has turned out for her. She is quoted by Denver's 9 News as saying, "This has turned into quite a fiasco. It's something that never should have happened and it's just devastating. My phone hasn't stopped ringing. My life has been threatened and I'll probably have to move out of town."

(You know, ma'am, you could have just accepted the cookies graciously. Or the girls' offer to pay for your medical bills.)

Nevertheless, the woman remains convinced that she was right, and that the girls had no business running around the neighborhood at night delivering cookies.

"Something bad could have happened to them," she told The Denver Post.

Yeah, they could have been sued by a dysfunctional middle-aged martyr for trying to do a good deed.

The problems with kids these days....

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