My Daughter Called The Cops On Me

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My crime? 1st degree potty training.

See, we’ve been teaching The Littlest Briston all the emergency basics lately – what to do if she gets lost, who to go to if she needs help, we had her memorize her address, all that good stuff.

We also taught her what to do if “something bad happens” when she’s at home. We took the phone and showed her how to press “9-1-1-Talk”. We explained that we never do this if there isn’t something wrong, since then the police would come and they’d be mad at her, but if there were really something wrong then she should call 911.

So, now we’re in the midst of potty training. We’ve had several breakthroughs, and we think we’re close*. Since our day care center is closed for the next several days, we figured this would be the perfect time for “boot camp” potty training – no diapers, no pull-ups, nothing but big girl underwear (unless we have to go out – she can wear a diaper when we leave the house, but we’re trying to avoid that as much as possible). If she pees herself, so be it, she’ll eventually learn.

She’s not happy about the situation. At all. She’s gone on the potty a few times, and is thrilled when she does so, but for much of the time she a bit of a crank about the whole deal. So when we got home a bit ago, we told her it was time to lose the diaper and put on her big girl underwear. A few minutes later, I heard a beeping sound coming from the living room. I walk in and see TLB holding the phone to her ear. I take it from her, and hear “911 – what’s your emergency?”

Sigh…

I explained to the operator that we had just taught our three-year-old about 911. He understood (my sister-in-law, a cop, told me that they get these calls all the time), and just confirmed my name and address.

We hung up, and I sat TLB down and explained once again that we do not call 911 unless there is an emergency, and that needing to go potty did not qualify as an emer***<ding dong!>***…

Oh, crap. We don’t get visitors here. Ever. There’s no way it’s a coincidence that this doorbell, that rings maybe once a week, just rang minutes after the 911 incident. I go to the front door, and yep, it’s da cops. For the second time in five minutes, I launch into my explanation. I had to tell a very bemused officer that it was my little girl, trying to report me for child abuse, who made the call.

Little narc.

*Actually, in the 90 minutes since I started typing this, she’s peed twice and pooped once. Good girl!

2

The only time we had the cops show up at our house, I was out in the yard doing yard work and up our long drive comes the sherriff.

I said, " You must be lost."

“We got a call from your house.” Says the man with a badge.

" From…my…" and around the corner came my precious first born, in diapers, carrying the phone and jabbering incoherently to the person on the other end.

(The kid hasn’t shut up since.)

Potty Training. An oxymoron if there ever was. THEY train YOU! like Soviet Russia!

3

You should have let them haul off the little juvie. A night in the clink would learn that little one! :smiley: See how she likes that metal toilet in the slammer–then her cute little potty trainer won’t seem so bad!

Damn kids–always trying to get you into trouble.

4

Just watch out for if she tries to file a restraining order against you.

5

My younger sister, in her teens, used to threaten to call the cops for child abuse. This was before 911, mind you. My father always told her that it would be WORTH it, not to have to deal with her. My father and my sister both have very hard heads, and my sister used to be VERY short tempered. She’s mellowed with age.

Then my sister had two sons. One of them in particular was short tempered and a damned brat (Andy, I love you, but I don’t know why your mom didn’t drown you on several occasions) (Andy is a very nice young adult now, BTW). On at least one occasion, Andy swore that he was gonna call the cops on his mother, and my dad piped up with “The number you want is 911.” As he said, it was a relief to see the drama played out when he wasn’t a major character in it.

6

The first time my son dialed 911 and hung up, they called back and we figured out what had happened and cleared it up over the phone.

The second time my son dialed 911 and hung up, he then took the phone off the hook again. When two police officers showed up at the door and asked his mother if she needed help, “You wash and I’ll dry” was probably not the response they were expecting.

7

I did that once when I was about thirteen. I called 911 during a fight with my parents, (over something stupid, I can’t even remember it now), and told them I was going to say that they were abusing me. Dad hit the disconnect button, but they still sent a cop out who proceeded to chew me a new one.

8

My stepdaughter, during her terrible adolescence (aren’t all girls’ adolescences terrible?), threatened to call the cops and report me for child abuse. At the time, we lived out in the boonies. The county line ran through our driveway. The only to get to our house in County A was through County B.

I just handed her the phone and told her to go ahead, that it would likely take at least thirty minutes for them to get there, once they figured out which county should respond and meanwhile, I was going to mop the floor with her (not one of my finer moments).

She declined.

9

I went on a 911 hangup call because a little boy got scared watching Scooby-do.

My 2 year old daughter called 911 because she wanted to see the “Bad Boys” (you know, bad boys bad boys whatca gonna do). The first thing my wife knew about it was when she started screaming with delight “Bad Boys!” when the police car showed up.

10

My niece did that a couple years ago, except she was just banging away on the phone. They don’t even have a 911 speed dial or anything. They didn’t realize she’d actually managed to make a call when sil took the phone away from her and turned it off, so they were totally taken by surprise and very wary when the cops showed up.

Of course, my damn fool brother nearly got himself slammed up against a police car for being a wife beater during all this. He and his wife are both kind of loud, so if you’re on the phone with someone and they’re in the background, it sounds a bit like people yelling at each other. So you have this 911 call where the caller never actually says anything, but there’s people yelling at each other in the background, and the phone abruptly hangs up. When 911 tries to call back, you get no answer. When the cops show up at the house, this really big guy comes out on the porch by himself and shuts the door behind him, while a tiny little frightened-looking woman peers anxiously out the windows.

It looks bad before he ever opens his mouth. And when he does open his mouth, he’s all defensive and won’t let you in the house. He denies there was ever any 911 call, any screaming, or any refusal to answer a callback from 911. Also, he keeps making comments about donuts and bacon (this is conjecture on my part, based on 33 years of knowing the guy) and trying to get you to leave without seeing the inside of the house or talking to the tiny frightened woman peering out the windows. It got rather hostile on both sides for a while until they ran down the time frame and what the 911 operator had heard. Once he realized what had happened, he laughed and invited to come meet the little felon.

They still checked the little felon and her mommy over very carefully for signs of domestic violence before leaving, though.

11

The one time this happened, it was my fault.

We had a phone with programmable speed dial, did one for 911, and taught my then 4 year old son what the button was and when he should use it. No problem there.

The bad part was that it was next to the button for my mother. I sat down on the couch to call her, went to push her button, and didn’t really pay close enough attention to what I was doing. I was shocked back to reality when, instead of Mom saying hello, I heard “911. What’s your emergency?” :smack:

A quick explanation took care of it. There was no knock on the door.

12

I used to work for a company that had this problem with their fax machine.

We had a fax in a hallway which was accessible to any user. Because we were naive and starry-eyed, we thought that posting instructions in clear English would be good enough to enable people to use the machine correctly.

The company sent a LOT of international faxes. To dial an international call, you start by dialing 11. Our fax was set up with a direct line out – no need to dial 9 for an external line.

Needless to say, despite a huge sign saying “YOU DO NOT NEED TO DIAL “9” TO GET AN OUTSIDE LINE” that we eventually taped to the top of the machine, so that you had to physically lift this sign off the keypad to dial your number, people frequently dialed “9-11-blah blah blah” and walked away, leaving their fax in the automatic feeder.

We had two visits form actual emergency personnel and many more callbacks from the 911 people until we finally moved the fax machine into a controlled-access area and told people we’d send the faxes FOR them.

13

I can’t wait for “Hal Briston: the Sitcom”. :cool: Couldn’t be any worse than most of the dreck the networks show now…

14

One time, when my youngest was about two, he was playing with the phone and managed to dial 911 and then leave the phone off the hook. So here I was minding my own business when the doorbell rings. The nice lady officer at the door tells me that someone at my residence has called 911 and that she needs to see that any children here are okay. I yelled for brat #2 to report front and center. Here I should mention that the entryway at my house is tiled and connects at right angles to the long main hallway leading back to the bedrooms. So brat #2 comes pounding up the hallway ( out of sight of the officer ) and then bursts into the entryway (clad only in underwear and socks ), sliding on the tile all the way across into the dining area ( now out of site of the officer again ). The nice lady officer, unable to stifle her bemusement and now totally devoid of any cop-like demeanor simply turned and headed back to her cruiser.

15

Our office has 9 for an outside line.

9 for an outside line, 1 for long-distance, glance at your notes/message/paperwork to confirm the number, yes 1, area code…

…and then the nice policemen come.

One time it was two nice police ladies who were quite stern with the person who’d inadvertently summoned them. They made her give her full name, date of birth, home address, etc. (I think they were having a bit of fun with her.)

16

That happened a lot in the 90s with dialup modems, too.

17

Oh god…for video of this event. I’m dying laughing over here.

18

Wow. If I had done that as a kid there would have been an epic level ass whopping party. My parents would have invited friends to take over when they got tired.

19

We have had the “stop calling 911 and hanging up” email go out recently. Jeez, at least admit you made a mistake when you call them by accident, people! Boston cops aren’t so happy about coming out for no reason.

My grandma loves telling the story of how she and my cousin used to play on the phone when he was little. One time he pushed some random buttons and she said “Hello, Mrs. McGillycuddy” Only to hear “911, what’s your emergency?”

“Mrs. McGillycuddy” laughs about that quite often.

20

When my little cousin was in pre-school, he pulled the fire alarm at the school on two separate occasions, so that everyone would have to go outside and then he could see the fire truck when it came. He also dialed 911 at least once while my mother was babysitting him, and she didn’t realize he’d done it until the cops came to the door. You had to watch him like a hawk to make sure he wasn’t summoning the authorities. Everyone was really happy when he grew out of that phase.