Some People Shouldn’t Own Stuff

A buddy of mine was having a little get together last night and invited me to drop by. I did and was enjoying myself immensely when I was introduced to a young lady who seemed a bit puzzled by my name. Finally she said “My sister reads this guy online and his name is Bill McCormick too. He even kind of looks like you in a way. Are you related?” So, being a smartass, I said “Very closely, I shave his face every morning.” To which she replied, very earnestly, “Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t know he was crippled.”

Yes, kids, welcome to my world.

Is it beer-o-clock yet?

Anyway, today I thought I’d take a look at what people will do to keep their stuff. If you’ve recently eaten you might want to bookmark this for later review.

Okay, here we go; The Joys of Dog Vomit!

One Florida family unwittingly helped serve a very expensive meal to their dog — $1,000 in cash — and then forced the pet to cough it up.

“I just think this is hilarious,” the dog’s owner, Christy Lawrenson of St. Augustine, Fla., told WJXT in Jacksonville, Fla on Friday.

She laughs now, but it was a different story two weeks ago.

“My husband and I are trying to pay off my car, and so every time we save $1,000, we just take it to the bank and we just put it in the account,” she told the Jacksonville station.

This time, she took the cash, paper-clipped it and left it in an envelope on the counter, she said. The couple then said goodbye to their dog Tuity, a Labrador Retriever/chow/bulldog mix, and left for work.

When her husband came home for lunch, the envelope was gone and he saw shards of $100 bills strewn across the floor.

The rest, including the paperclip, was in Tuity’s stomach, she said.

Lawrenson told WJXT that her husband induced the dog to vomit by feeding Tuity hydrogen peroxide.

“I took the money from the vomit and put it in a bag and saved it for him because I didn’t want to puzzle it back together. It was still not real to me even though I had dug through vomit all afternoon,” Lawrenson said.

They pieced $900 back together, but the last $100 bill had one too many serial numbers missing, she said.

The couple sent it to the Department of Treasury with a letter of explanation.

“I didn’t really see that one coming, and I guarantee we’ll keep money away from him for now on,” Lawrenson said.

I know a grand is a lot of money but, still ….. bagging up dog vomit so you can piece together each individual bill? And, really, how did they get the dog to swallow hydrogen peroxide? I could never even get a dog to swallow its pills.

On the other hand I’m betting this story is a first for the Treasury Department. Even if it was fake it would be worth sending them $100 just so they could post the letter on their wall.

Okay, moving on; The Joys of Professional Dumpster Diving!

This one’s not as gross.

We’ve all accidentally thrown something valuable away in the trash, but what if that something was worth more than $10,000? Would you swim in a pile of waste to find it?

One husband was faced with that conundrum and he didn’t think twice.

“The worst move of my life, horrible,” is how Brian McGuinn says he felt when he realized he had thrown out his wife’s engagement ring.

McGuinn, from Margate, Fla., meant to throw out a disposable razor, and ended up chucking the ring with it. The one and a half carat diamond ring was valued at around $10,000, and worth its weight in sentimental value.

He and his wife Anna have been married five years, and are now expecting a child.

“I just started crying and I would stop crying, and remind myself that jewelry is replaceable,” says Anna.

By the time they realized what happened, Waste Management had already picked up the trash from their community.

Devastated, Anna called Wheelabrator — the waste management company, and within an hour, McGuinn was suited up, ready to jump into more than eight tons of garbage.

Workers were able to identify the garbage from McGuinn’s collection route, they even leveled the 10-foot high pile so that he could search for the ring.

After sifting through sludge, gunk, food scraps, and anything else you’d find in a dumpster, he found his diamond in the rough.

“Once I found it, I actually let out a manly scream!,” says McGuinn, who describes the moment of finding his wife’s bling amongst the garbage as winning the lottery. He rushed home to return the ring to its rightful owner.

“It was covered in muck. He just slipped it right on my finger and promised to never touch it again,” joked Anna.

She says she’s so appreciative of her husband’s uniquely chivalrous move. McGuinn says he wouldn’t think twice to search through the garbage again.

“She’s the love of my life. That ring was meant for her and no one else,” he said. “She’s everything to me.”

On the one hand that nice man just bought himself a year’s worth of Floridian styled knob polishing. Ask a parent if you don’t know what that means.

On the other ….. ewww!

And, believe it or not, I didn’t realize that everyone involved today was from Florida. That was just a happy accident.

Although I can’t say I’m surprised.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJ3eeRCoIBY&w=500&h=319]

Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!