If your parents took away your Xbox as punishment when you were fifteen, what would you have done? Gotten pissed probably, sulked, slammed doors, etc. The kind of emotional outbursts people with developing hormones and immature social skills would do. Normal behavior, given the circumstances and the individual. (Of course, this assumes there were Xboxes when you were fifteen, but if there weren’t, just play along, OK?)

Not one fifteen year-old in Buffalo Grove, Illinois (near Chicago). Nope. He called 911 to ask if his parents had the right to do this. He called at 12:50 pm on a Sunday to seek emergency assistance for his grievous injury and hung up in the middle of the call. First, calling 911 is only for real emergencies, like being robbed or in a car accident with serious injuries or someone’s been murdered right in front of you, that sort of thing. Someone is in real danger of dying or seriously hurt or in imminent peril. That’s what 911 is for.

Second, don’t hang up on the 911 people. They are supposed to make sure everything is OK before they close out a call. In this case, they found a couple of nice police officers who had the time to go by and explain to the young man that, yes, his parents did have the right to confiscate his Xbox for as long as they damn well pleased. One would also assume they discussed what is and is not an emergency for the purposes of calling 911.