Help this kid out – give him the finger
May 13, 2005

There's something funny about this story out of North Carolina but I can't put my finger on it.  And neither can Brandon Fizer.

Fizer is the employee of Kohl's Frozen Custard in Wilmington, N.C. who lost a fingertip to a frozen custard machine. The wayward digit was then served to one Clarence Stowers, who refuses to return it.

This story raises several questions. The first one is, why? I mean, how big weirdo do you have to be to keep some poor schmuck’s detached digit? Sure, finding a body part in your froyo can be unsettling but what do you gain by keeping the thing?

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Stowers intends to sue the pants off of the yogurt shop. I'd be tempted to do the same thing but, according to experts, Stowers could have returned the finger without damaging his case. Returning the finger would have also helped him look a lot less like a skidmark.

Stowers took the finger home and stuck it in his freezer. Now it can't be reattached and Fizer faces the very real possibility of being called "Stubs" the rest of his life.

Another question: how did the finger make it from Fizer's hand, into the yogurt, and then into the bowl Stowers was eating from? Wouldn't you notice almost immediately if you'd just had one of your fingers lopped off? Losing a finger is hardly the same as misplacing you sunglasses. It's not like Fizer went to dial the phone and all of a sudden realized he was a little short in the finger department.

Stowers' attorney last week wouldn't say if a lawsuit against Kohl's is planned, saying he needed "to get some more facts.'' Probably facts like how much the yogurt chain is worth, and how much money fellow shyster lawyers have been able to extort under similar circumstances.

The lawyer also said his client is concerned about possible disease in the fingertip and kept it because he wanted to test it for "all the diseases that are out here now." Right -- like Stowers is going to run the finger through his Suzie Homemaker Pathology Lab. Sounds like Stowers has been watching too much "CSI:Miami." 

I guess we should just be thankful this accident didn’t happen in a nudist colony.