How lawyers are wrecking civilization

The stupidity implied by the above picture cannot be directly attributed to lawyers.

But let me explain.

The guy who parked Allis in this mudhole and then couldn't get her out was guilty of one thing; he didn't have the old brain switch in the "on" position when he made the decision to pull into the corner field.

After sending the back-hoe operator packing I spent the better part of an afternoon trying to get her out, only to have it dug in deeper than ever by the time nightfall set in.

Had to spend a few days coming up with a plan. In the meantime I had to bear the scorn of everybody in the neighborhood driving by and tut-tutting about how that was ever gonna come out of there.

I was able to at least sow seeds of doubt by claiming that Allis-in-the-mud was an "art installation". I called it "Spring Thaw". Pretty sure nobody really believed that, but it kept them quiet for a few days.

I'd almost had Allis out of the mud at one point but I ran out of solid ground that I could claw into and drag her out.

That's not quite true. I could have clawed into the road. Unfortunately the Township guys are sharp enough to figure out that there might be a connection between the tore-up road and my back-hoe parked behind the barn a couple hundred yards away.

I'd noticed that the hydraulics seemed a little out of mojo at the far ends of the boom's reach and picked up a five gallon pail of no.32 hydraulic fluid at the Tractor Supply Company to top things up.

That's when I noticed the warning on the side of the pail. It shows a baby  bottoms-up in a bucket of hydraulic fluid. In three languages I'm warned that "small children can drown in small amounts of liquid."

Great! I'm trying to focus on getting Allis out of the mud and now my already-stressed intellectual resources are preoccupied with babies drowning in buckets.

Hell, if one baby can drown in a bucket, how many could be lost in the mud-hole? Why are they haranguing me with such self-evident nonsense?

Then I realized; it's the lawyers!

They have to bring up every possible eventuality that might ever occur when someone somewhere uses their product with their brain switch in the "off" position.

Hey, if your missus is running a day-care in the back of your heavy equipment maintenance facility, one of the tots could crawl away from day-care corner and end up head-first in a pail of no. 32 hydraulic fluid.

Then somebody might sue.

So the real purpose of all these silly warnings is to make sure people can wander through their days with never so much as a passing nod to something called "common sense".

Lawyers are killing common sense.