A recurring theme for me has been how incompetent idiots are not only a hazard to themselves but also to those around them. I will relate yet another proof positive that this is true which happened only yesterday and could have caused the author great embarrassment and worse.

            I suppose the best place to begin is to mention that I am an authority on fungi and regionally am known for that distinction having lectured and written about it for some decades now. As background information I have to illustrate that a very common and popular mushroom is known as, “Chicken of the Woods” because it tastes so much like chicken. It is easily identified by its bright orange color and that it grows to great sizes and in my part of the country is found only on oak trees as it is a shelf mushroom. Another common variety of fungi is known as the “Jack O’ Lantern” which is orange (about the color of pumpkins) and grows on the ground in bunches. While the Chicken of the Woods is excellent to eat, the Jack O’ Lantern is toxic and while not fatal, causes excruciating pain and digestive upset usually requiring hospitalization for treatment.

            Having established that, I must now digress to some background information about the principles of the story, namely, my sister and myself. She and I have long gotten along about as amicably as a match and gasoline. It is much as if I were to say the moon was made of green cheese she’d have to say it was made of Swiss cheese. Earlier this week we had had a big blowing out and weren’t really speaking again. Then last evening she comes to my house announcing she has chicken of the woods mushroom and offers me some. I go to look and I blurted out, “That’s not chicken of the woods, it’s Jack O’ Lantern!! It’s highly toxic so throw it away in the garbage!”

            Only a few hours later did it occur to me what had almost happened. First of all, she could have poisoned her self, my mother, and friends and neighbors! But what really gave me a shudder was how I could have been dragged into this. Keeping in mind that she and I never get along and had just had a very audible argument, if she had eaten it and landed in the hospital, how long would it have been before someone adds up two and two and arrives at five? By this I mean that eventually the police would have heard about it and realizing that we were always at loggerheads, and that I am a very well known and visible authority on fungi, that I had deliberately either given her the mushrooms to eat or tricked her into eating them. I would have ended up at police headquarters answering a lot of pointed questions, then to add insult to injury, the press would have latched onto the story and run a headline like, “Relative of Mushroom Expert Hospitalized With Mushroom Poisoning: Police Are Investigating!”

            So I totally innocently would have been dragged into a huge mess and embarrassment, possibly requiring a large expenditure for legal counsel, not to mention the public humiliation and suspicion which would include my reputation for giving lectures on the subject. As a matter of fact, I am scheduled to offer just such a program this very same week!

            So you can imagine how uneasy I am right about now as I am thinking how close all this came to coming true and how I would have been defenseless to prevent it all! Sheesh, I shudder in a cold sweat!

            To break the drama at this point and to conclude with a little levity, I will relate an old joke which I had the privilege to actually pull once years ago. It goes that a man was telling another man that he had had three wives. The other man asked what happened to them. The answer was this classic line: “The first one died from eating poison mushrooms. The second one died from eating poison mushrooms, and the third one died of a fractured skull because she wouldn’t eat her poison mushrooms.”

            I always chuckle at that one but I am still in a cold sweat at what nearly became fact. But it certainly proves my point once again that incompetents and idiots are more than a hazard to themselves but have a way of dragging anyone within any reasonable distance along with them in their self destruction…and in more ways than one!