Last night, on my ride home I ran into a friend of mine who lives in one of those old row houses in the South End.  He looked a little down in the mouth, and when I asked him what was the matter, he told me that yesterday morning he woke up to the cops banging on his door.  His upstairs neighbor, a student at Northeastern, had fallen from the roof, and they wanted someone to I.D. the body out on the sidewalk.

He said he just kept seeing the kid lying there in a pool of blood.  He said the cops had cleaned off the sidewalk, but there was a puddle of blood in the gutter, and they'd tossed the police tape in it once they were finished with the "crime scene."  And the kid had landed right at the foot of the steps leading up to the front door.

It's a terrible thing for the kid, of course, and for my friend, who's a sensitive guy, and was clearly traumatized.  And, you know, who wouldn't be?  Most of us don't encounter this kind of thing very often, thank goodness. 

Sadly, though, this has happened a couple times already this year—young people partying on the roofs of these rowhouses at night, and falling to their deaths.  So, it seems a good occasion to remind the youngsters out there who might be tempted to climb out onto the pitched roofs of their rowhouse apartment late at night, that the laws of physics are generally incontrovertible, and apply to you, especially when you've tied a few on. 

It's tragic when something like this happens, of course, partly because it's often entirely avoidable.  These types of accidents are usually of the it-was-a-good-idea-at-the-time variety, and it's no mere coincidence that most cases seem to involve that storied nexus of students and alcohol.  

Another odd occurrence involving falling bodies, while we're on the topic: this time in Lowell, involving a 22 year old UMass student, who was walking across the University Avenue Bridge around 1:10 a.m. Saturday morning with a friend. CBS4 reports: "According to police, he kept leaning over the railing, lifting his feet off the ground. Police said a friend told him not to do it. According to police the second time he leaned over the railing he fell over the railing and dropped approximately 90 feet, hitting the rocks and water below."

You can't deny, it's not only an utterly avoidable death, but a stupid way to die, to boot.  Sad to say, someone else had to witness it, too. 

Suicide is sometimes suspected to be an act of spite that haunts those left behind to pick up the pieces.  Freak stupicides, while not premeditated, have a similar impact on survivors.  But the fact that most stupicides are avoidable, spontaneous, and have no perpetrator, only victims, leaves survivors, and especially witnesses, with a peculiar problem.  It is not the problem of evil against which we revenge ourselves by waging good, as those who've lost loved ones in other ways—from murder to car accidents to diseases like cancer—can.  It's the problem of an innocent goof, a moment of stupidity, and of luck. 

And unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no recourse to the Hebrew God on any of these counts.