News

A friend of mine, a journalist, wrote a story once about 911 calls. To research his story he spent a night at a 911 call centre and the call that he remembers the most vividly was from a couple who were arguing.

The husband part of this couple had put his hand down the kitchen sink to retrieve his wife's wedding ring and five hours later his hand was still stuck there.

As his wife explained his situation to the 911 operator, the man could be heard in the background yelling, "No. no! Don't call 911! We don't need 911! Get off the phone!"

Periodically his wife would take a break from her increasingly panicked conversation with the operator to yell back at him that they'd "tried everything" and it had been five hours and not to be "an idiot" and finally at the end of the call the man could be heard calling out to her, "Oh, okay. But tell them: No sirens!"

I feel for this guy. No sirens.

A life entwined in kitchen plumbing is a small price to pay for no sirens and for never having the local paper report your mistake, or the neighbours either and few of us want to be forever associated with Miss Latreasa L. Goodman of Fort Pierce, Fla., who recently called 911 three times because the McDonald's she'd ordered from had run out of Chicken McNuggets.

I thought about Kitchen Sink Man when I read this week about the desperate 911 call made in Connecticut by Robert Drawbaugh, whose estranged wife had handcuffed herself to him in order (as she later explained to the arresting officer) that they might have a conversation without him leaving the room.

She was allegedly biting his arms and torso as he made the call, begging the police to come. Which is awful and yet you sense when you read their story that at some point, early on in their courtship, the words "estranged wife" and "arresting officer" might've popped into Mr. Drawbaugh's head in connection with this woman and he opted to ignore them.

Crazy women sometimes make fun girlfriends but they make disastrous ex-wives. It's a painful lesson. Slowly learned. The story of this couple, as told, raises some questions. The press has reported that she'd changed the locks on the bedroom doors while he slept so that he couldn't leave. They report this as if it were normal.

No one questions why a couple would have an apparently keyed lock on their bedroom door in the first place or how it was she managed to change the locks while he slept.

Lock changing isn't a trivial thing. Even if the holes were pre-drilled and she were switching from a mere passage set to a deadbolt, especially a double-deadbolt, she'd need light. There'd be prying and fitting. "You basically need three arms even with adequate lighting to change a double deadbolt," said James Bridgeman, a locksmith with 20 years' experience, when questioned about the case.

There are several reasonable explanations as to why a man might end up sleeping with his estranged wife but fewer as to why he'd end up sleeping through what is essentially light construction.

Was there often some dry-walling foreplay as well with these two? Is that why he didn't stir during all of this? Did they enjoy a little This Old House fantasy role play? And is that why he returned to her? This although he has called her violent and complained that she'd had him followed when he'd left and gone to California. Was it because, when it mattered the most to him, she'd wear a leather tool belt and let him call her Norm?

It's a mystery. But it's also rather nightmarish — handcuffed to your mad ex while she viciously bites you. That's bad. Very bad. So bad that I propose that this case become the 911 benchmark.

From now on, if you find yourself in a nasty situation, you should ask yourself: "Sure, it's bad, but over all, given a choice, would I rather be in this situation, or locked in a bedroom, handcuffed to my ex while she draws blood with her teeth from my arms and torso?"

And if the answer is "Yes, I'd much rather be handcuffed to my ex while she viciously bites my arms and torso and also says 'We really need to talk'," then call 911. But if it's "No, that sounds worse," then maybe you could try a plumber or just order the Big Mac.