(warning to all parents : this giant, disease carrying bird does not have the legal or medical authority to examine your children)

Perhaps the following story has nothing to do with St. Louis’ recent status as Gonorrhea Capital Of The U.S.A. But it’s fun to pretend otherwise. From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (link courtesy Tim Cook)

A teenager from Illinois is suing the Cardinals, claiming she was ostracized at school after a crude comment about her was shown at the ballpark last year.

The message appeared on a scoreboard that allows fans to display custom remarks via their cell phones. According to the lawsuit, she was at a game with her high school in May 2006 when a female classmate sent the offending message.

It claimed the plaintiff œhas an STD! Eww!

The girl, then 16, is identified only by her initials ” A.B.

The suit, filed Wednesday in St. Louis Circuit Court, claims that the œshame and humiliation she suffered forced her to stay out of school, take her final exams in a separate office, and seek psychological counseling.

Almost all of her friends were at the game, the suit says, and afterwards œboys that she was friends with would no longer associate with her.

Hey, the same thing happened to me during my only semester in college. Except it wasn’t an SMS sent to a stadium scoreboad that caused me the embarrassment — it was an editorial in the school paper.