A Puff of Madness
About two weeks ago, I watched a fascinating documentary. It was about these Swedish twins named Ursula and Sabina Eriksson who hurled themselves into traffic on the motorway in 2008. The story is quite long and involved so I’m not going to explain it to you in detail. In brief, they ran out in front of speeding cars, but miraculously survived. When discharged from the hospital Sabina stabbed a man to death and then jumped from a bridge onto another busy road. She broke both ankles and fractured her skull. You can read all about it here.
Anyway, when she was prosecuted for her crimes she received several psychiatric evaluations. One of her diagnosis was that she had a puff of madness–meaning she was mad for a short time, but now she’s fine. Can you believe that? You could use that excuse for almost anything.
“Sorry, about that. I just had a puff of madness.”
“You didn’t take me seriously when I said that, did you? I was having a puff of madness at the time so I really didn’t mean it.”
If she could get only five years in jail for killing a man because she had a puff of madness, I should be able to get out of a few small mistakes using the same excuse.
