Calling in Sick - Make that Calling in Shot

I've never been a big one for calling in sick. Chalk it up to what's been pretty spectacularly good health, but I don't think that during my full-time, go-to-the-office-every-day career - which spanned roughly 25 years - I averaged more than a half-day per year.

And mental health days were never high on my list, either. The one and only time I took one (when I worked at Wang) I felt so guilty that I ending up spending the day in bed with some unspecified misery. (Still, it was pretty much better than my average day at Wang, I must say.)

But although I don't have all that much experience calling in sick, I'm quite certain that I could fake an illness and and excuse pretty handily - the laryngitis voice, the I-just-crawled-off-my-death-bed-to-make-this-call message (sniff, sniff, hack, hack), the family emergency... I could even take a page from Red Sox slugger Manny Ramirez who, when he wants to skip an event or show up late always cites his sick grandmother.

I'm quite sure I wouldn't have to resort to what one yo-yo out in Washington State did recently, which was have a friend shoot him in the arm so he could take the day off.

First of all, after four months worth of PT for a broken shoulder - and a likely four more to go - the last place I would ask someone to shoot me would be in the shoulder. But that's what Daniel Kuch (pronounced "kooch", which - of course - makes the whole thing even funnier) asked his buddy to do for him. The shoulder! The shoulder!

Wouldn't it have made more sense, if Kuch was insistent on going the shoot-'em-up route - to have asked to be shot in some fleshy part of the body - upper thigh, or calf, or butt - that might hurt like hell, but might not involve quite so much out and out misery.

The article didn't specify, but maybe Kuch just got "winged."

Having grown up watching all sorts of idiotic cowboy shows on TV, I've always been intrigued by our hero's ability to forge on after being hit in the upper arm - it's always the upper arm - by a bullet. "It just grazed me," our hero would say. "I just got winged." Our hero might tie the wound off with his bandana, but he was able to shoot on, thrusting his trusty six-shooter out from behind his cover of real-fake rock to blaze away at the bad guys.

Maybe Kuch was like out hero.

But he sure doesn't sound as honest and upright as our Western hero would have been.

In fact, Kuch reported to the police that he'd been the victim of a drive-by shooting while he was jogging.

But detectives say Kuch later acknowledged that he asked a friend to shoot him so he could get some time off work and avoid a drug test.

Now his buddy is under arrest for "reckless endangerment", and Kuch himself is likely to be busted for "false reporting."

Well, if he's in the stir, he won't have to worry about getting time off of work. In fact, I'm guessing that - once his employer found out about the true nature of Kuch's wound - he'll have plenty of time on his hands, and no need to worry about that pesky drug test.

Danny, Danny, Danny - wouldn't it have been simpler and more straightforward to fake a headache, or a cough, or the "gastro-intestinal flu"? And/or to have laid off the weed or the blow or whatever you were doing for a little bit, given that a drug test was looming?

Ah, well, sick days are probably the least of Daniel Kuch's worries at this point.