The mere mention of the word "suicide" causes us to flinch. We’d rather think that nobody did that sort of thing. But some people do and cops are all too familiar with this mode ending a human life.

Some people don’t seem to be able to do anything right, even when they plan to leave Planet Earth — for good. Take the guy in Tucson, Arizona. He turns on the gas in his trailer and sits down in his recliner to die peacefully.

Like many people, he has the attention span of a fruit fly. After a few minutes he gets bored, so he turns on the television. Meanwhile gas continues to fill the small trailer. To relax, the guy lights a cigarette.

He spends several months in a burn center where head doctors talk to him. Today the guy is okay except for a strange looking scar between his nose and his mouth — right where he lit the cigarette.

In another case, out on the left coast of California, there’s a woman alive today who drove her car 45 miles per hour straight off an oceanside cliff. Her intention was to kill herself.

She almost made it. Her car plunged 350 feet down a steep embankment toward the pounding surf. How did she survive such a ride?

Usually a safety conscious lady, she had her seat belt on. That plus an airbag. She sustained only minor cuts and bruises.

Then there’s the guy out in Kansas who, for reasons known only to him, decides to end his life by becoming a human torch.

He steps off the back porch, douses himself with gasoline, then strikes a match. But the pain from the fire all over his body is so intense — so much greater than anything he could have imagined — that he falls into his swimming pool.

That put out the flames. But the poor guy never learned to swim. He was 63.