Umbrella KILLS!

Remember my post about how some organization think umbrellas kill 2,000,000 a year?

Even Uncle picked up on that.


That's 740,000 more people dead from umbrellas than are killed by car crashes in a year, in the world.

Talk about a hidden menace!  Why is no one talking about this?!  And HOW are the umbrellas killing folks? 

• There is the obvious 'wind catches it, it flies through the air and comes down tip first' stabbing you to the ground like a bug in a lepidopterist collection.
• Kids jumping off roofs with an umbrella as a makeshift parachute.
• Lightning strikes because it looks like a lightning rod, and you use it during rain storms, duh.
• Some umbrellas have a ricin spiked tip.  That can't be good for you.
• The mechanism can fail, collapsing the umbrella around your head, temporarily blinding you, and you step into traffic.  Hit by city bus, but umbrella-caused death.
• Shoddy materials with lots of heavy metals that then are transferred to your bloodstream, absorbed through the skin in your left hand.
• You could choke on your umbrella when you try to swallow it. 
• The toxic fumes if gives off when you walk around with an umbrella on fire.
• Umbrella gun.
• You picked up one of Burgess Meredith's umbrella by mistake and misuse the special features.
• You might commit seppuku using the sword in the handle.  That blade could cause a lot of problems, actually.
• Carried away in a hurricane or tornado because, dammit, you paid $25 for that umbrella!
• The umbrella could give you AIDS. 
• Perturb the wrong umbrella holder and he might shove that bumbershoot up yer... orifice... and open it.  Killing you, thusly.
• Blood poisoning when you catch the web of one hand on that sharp bit while opening or closing it.  Man, that smarts.   Shoulda used Neosporin.
• Helicopter blade failure if you  have a deluxe model. 
• If you open one quickly near someone with a weak heart, you might startle them into a myocardial infarction.
• Angry grandma mistakes you for a Masher, bashing you in the head and shoulders repeatedly with her parasol.  You die later of concussion related complications. 

Ok, 2,000,000 umbrella deaths makes more sense now.  With that many one of you MUST have seen a deadly umbrella accident.  I've seen lots of car accidents, but no brolly brouhaha's.

Hmmm, I wonder how many of these deaths could also get appended in the accident report with: "alcohol was involved."