Doofus Of The Day #37, #38, #39 and #40

Many Doofi (individual and collective) to catalog tonight.

Doofus #37 is collective - the entire Simcoe County District School Board in Ontario, Canada.

The mother of an autistic girl says the public school board was "completely unprofessional" to formulate a theory that her daughter was being sexually abused based on a psychic's perception.

Barrie resident Colleen Leduc wants an apology from the Simcoe County District School Board, which called in the Children's Aid Society (CAS) to investigate.

According to the board, the case is still under investigation, although Leduc says it was closed.

Leduc immediately pulled her 11-year-old daughter, Victoria Nolet, out of Terry Fox Elementary School in north-end Barrie.

"I have trust issues now," Leduc said. "What are they going to concoct next week?"

Victoria has severe autism and is nonverbal.

The local CAS won't comment on specific investigations, but said the legislation stipulates that all cases of suspected abuse be reported "if there are reasonable grounds."

"The schools are our eyes and ears in the community," said Mary Ballantyne, executive director of the Simcoe County chapter. "They are with children more than anyone else in the community and are the first to spot a child who may be in need of our protection."

About 80% of the CAS's calls reporting abuse and neglect come from schools, she added.

But Leduc said information gleaned from a psychic shouldn't be the impetus for the board to launch a CAS investigation.

"First of all, what were they doing taking a psychic's word? Then they correlated that with (Victoria's) behaviour to design a theory," Leduc said.

. . .

Leduc said they advised her that Victoria's educational assistant (EA) had visited a psychic, who said a youngster whose name started with "V" was being sexually abused by a man between 23 and 26 years old. Leduc was also handed a list of recent behaviours exhibited by her daughter.

School principal Brian Tremain -- who referred phone calls seeking comment to the board -- advised Leduc that the CAS had been contacted.

"That's when I got sick to my stomach," she said. "I was shocked the whole meeting."

Shocked? I should damn well think so! For a school board to take the word of a psychic charlatan about something as serious as sexual abuse is bad enough. To then think that an autistic child, with known behavioral symptoms, is acting in such a way as to prove such baseless allegations . . . that's criminally stupid, IMHO. I hope Mrs. Leduc sues the living daylights out of them!

(Pauses to let blood pressure diminish to normal levels.)

On to Doofus #38 - also collective, but only two of 'em.

Two men caught with $372,000 in cash near the Costa Rica-Panama border told police that they just wanted to buy some bananas.

Police said the two appeared to be nervous after their car was stopped over the weekend. Officials searched the vehicle and found the cash in a briefcase.

Police commander Freddy Hernandez said in a statement Monday that the men told officials they were banana brokers.

But police are holding them on possible money laundering charges.

Bananas cost about $1.65 a pound in Costa Rica.

*Gigglesnort!*

Guys, if you're going to make up an excuse, how about a more believable one? By my calculations, that much money, at the going rate for bananas, would buy you something over 225,000 pounds of fruit. Just how did you plan to fit that into your car?

Doofus #39, from Terre Haute, IN, is singular.

Call it a lemonade standoff. A girl whose lemonade stand was robbed of $17.50 chased the suspect into a nearby home and called police, who spent nearly an hour trying to coax the man into surrendering.

"The guy came up and was, like, 'Give me your money,'" said 12-year-old Dominique Morefield, who was running the lemonade stand with a group of friends. "I was shocked. It was just my immediate reaction to chase after him."

Dominique dashed after the man who ran into a house, and then she called police. Officers eventually persuaded Steve Tryon, 18, to come outside after 45 minutes and arrested him on a preliminary felony charge of robbery.

Tryon made an initial appearance in Superior Court on Tuesday and was ordered to be held in the Vigo County Jail on $50,000 bond. He will be formally charged Friday, county Prosecutor Terry Modesitt said.

I wonder how he's going to explain that to his fellow felons behind bars?

"So, what didja do ta get in here?"

"Well, I . . . er . . . I robbed a 12-year-old girl's lemonade stand."

"What? How'd they catch ya?"

"Well, she followed me an' called the cops on me."

"BWAAAAHAHAHAHA!"

I think it'll take him a few years to live that one down . . .

Doofus #40 is plural once more - the entire credit checking and credit-card issuing department of the Bank of America.

This past spring, Bennett Christiansen applied for and received his first-ever credit card.

There's only one problem: He's six.

CBS station WBBM-TV in Chicago reports an Aurora mom was somewhat amused last April when she received a credit card application addressed to her then-5-year-old son. As a test she had young Bennett Christiansen fill out the application and she sent it in. She was stunned when Bank of America sent her kid a shiny new card with a $600 limit.

Amy Christiansen said her entire family had been receiving credit card applications addressed to each member of her family, including Bennett, who has since turned 6, and Christiansen's 3-year-old child.

Christiansen said she decided to allow Bennett to fill out a credit card application from Bank of America. He accurately wrote in his birthday in 2002, his annual income of $0, and the fact that he is an "other," that is, neither a homeowner nor a renter. He signed his name in writing that was obviously that of a child, she said.

A short time later, Christiansen said she received a credit card with Bennett's name on it.

Christiansen was left baffled, and troubled by the ease with which the application was apparently accepted.

"I would hope that somebody would look up the credit card application before a credit card is issued … people get credit card denials all the time," Christiansen said. "How can somebody who is an adult who has a job get a credit card denial, and a child who has no income and no assets get one? I would certainly hope they would have some sort of review process."

Yep. The banks don't really give a damn about the individual any more. They see us as mere digits in the system, to be flooded with offers of credit, then soaked for all the interest payments they can get out of us. As for checking whether we're actually in need of (or deserve) that credit? You must be joking!

Peter