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November 04, 2005
Only Glue... Can Make This World Seem Right....
It's a red letter day when there's not one, but two funny glue stories making the wire service rounds at the same time.
First up, the Home Depot in Boulder, Colorado... where someone put glue on a toilet seat. Unfortunately for 57 year old Bob Doughetry, he had to go and apparently couldn't hold on till he got home. He ended up stuck to the seat... and then sat on the throne for 15 minutes calling for help, while the employees allegedly ignored him because they thought he was joking. Of course, Dougherty is doing things the American Way, and has filed a lawsuit against Home Depot.
The lawsuit, filed Friday, said Dougherty was recovering from heart bypass surgery and thought he was having a heart attack when he got stuck at the Louisville store on the day before Halloween 2003. A store employee who heard him calling for help informed the head clerk by radio, but the head clerk “believed it to be a hoax,” the lawsuit said.
Okay, I've never been stuck to a toilet seat, but I have a hard time understanding how pain in one's thighs and backside -- and the inability to get off the pot -- could be mistaken for a heart attack. (Not to mention that I would have thought that I'd have noticed when I sat down that the seat felt wet and sticky -- which would have grossed me out to the point that I'd have immediately stood up and started scrubbing... how does one take the throne long enough for the glue to sit?) All the same, you have to feel for the guy... this is probably someone's dad, recovering from bypass surgery... and he has to get wheeled out of the hardware store with a toilet seat stuck to his ass. It's a funny story, but it's not funny at the same time. Whichever frat boy football player (Boulder's a university town, after all) pulled this stunt, he's got a karmic wedgie coming his way.
But for as embarrassing and painful an experience this may have been for Mr. Dougherty, he should count his blessings that he's not Kenneth Slaby of Pittsburgh
Slaby contends that O'Toole invited him over to her home on May 7, 2000, where he fell asleep. He woke up to find that O'Toole had used Super Glue to stick his genitals to his abdomen, glued his buttocks together and spelled out a profanity on his back in nail polish... Slaby said O'Toole told him it was payback for their breakup, and he had to walk a mile to a gas station to call for help. He pressed charges and O'Toole pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and served six months' probation.
I can't even fathom that one mile walk... how do you walk a mile with your butt glued together and Mini-Me glued to your abdomen? I mean, that one must have qualified for the Monty Python "Silly Walks" skit - with or without the nail polish profanity on his back. (Remind me never to fall asleep at an ex's house again!) But the best line in the story -- attempted in apparent seriousness by the woman's attorney -- was this gem:
O'Toole's attorney, Chuck Evans, said it was a consensual act and Slaby wasn't permanently damaged.
Okay, I'm firmly in the 'whatever floats your boat' camp when it comes to bedroom stuff; if you and your significant other have a thing for glue, I say go for it. But I have a hard time (no pun intended) trying to figure out the utility of this usage. Somehow, I'm guessing that ol' Ken Slaby wasn't laying there going, "Now lather me with SuperGlue... yeah baby, that's it, right there... now stick me to myself... oh yeah, baby...." And what's with the line about Slaby not being permanently damaged? Oh, so that makes it okay?
Thus ends your Strange Glue Stories Update for November. Good night, and good luck.
Comments
About the guy stuck to the toilet seat thinking he was having a heart attack... Well, I don't know, I've never had a heart attack. But I imagine that glue on a toilet seat is so out of the ordinary that he may have thought he'd lost it in a fit of lack of oxygen to the brain or something.
But how he sat down, on a glue covered toilet seat, with no sanitary cover, and without inspecting the toilet seat, in a public restroom is certainly a peculiar mystery to me. I guess he really must've had an urgent call from nature!
But regardless of all that - it was poor judgement on the part of the employees to assume it was a hoax or joke, no matter how ridiculous. If I was somewhere and heard someone yelling for help, even if I thought they were pulling a prank, I would call 9-1-1, if for no other reason than to teach the prankster a lesson about pulling something like that.
The second story reminds me of a story a guy (who had asked me out) told me... He caught his wife in bed with another man, and then, I believe at a later time, caught her, tied her up, and shaved her head... because it was her long hair that attracted him to her in the first place, and he wanted to spite her because that's what men loved most about her, or that's how he thought. Naturally, and not just because I have long hair, I did not accept his dinner invitation.
People can be really screwy.
Posted by: Chloe at November 7, 2005 11:16 PM
