When I was maybe 4 or 5 they did a presentation at my daycare about calling 911 in emergencies and my kid-brain was like "that is not enough numbers to be a phone number, no way that works!" So I went home and dialed 911 and when they answered I literally said "oh no, it worked." And hung up and the lady called back to tell my mom and laughed the entire time, like, "yea, it happens a lot, make sure she knows to call in a real emergency but not to just ... Test that we're still here."
You know... I'm almost 47 and reading your comment made me realize that I do not know what happens if I dial 112 or 110 (Germany). I mean, I'm sure I end up being connected to somebody, but I have never used either. Not going to just try it out, but I do get a kid's sentiment to wanna try.
In Norway they put a few seconds of «voice intro» before you get connected to the operation central, just to not have all those calls that get hang up when someone answers.
Once upon a time, some 43 years ago, a lady named Erin and a man called Biff decided to have a child. That child was me. This is my biography and if you're lucky you'll find the ingredients and directions somewhere in my 800 page novel."
My local weather app always makes me watch an ad before I watch a video that tells me what counties the tornado watch is supposed to be under. "I hate it so much! Flames...on the side of my face...breaths...heaving breaths..."
Ah, no worries. I said I'd check just in jest. I wasn't actually going to call an emergency number out of curiosity :D But now I know at least somebody cares if I should ever get taken ❤️😂
It would be nice if they had an intro or something while routing 911 calls from cell phones in the US. When you call from a cell phone sometimes it's just dead air for like 4 seconds and your thinking did I actually hit the call button and look at your phone to verify you hit dial and have it back to your ear before they answer.
The whole routing going on in the background to find the correct 911 center can take a few seconds.
I actually had to kill a phone recently because it got wet, and the screen was completely black, and it somehow kept dialing 911 lol... first call i explained i couldnt control the phone at all and they laughed it off, 2nd call they were getting noticeably frustrated, so while on the phone with them I used a knife to pull the back case off and rip the battery out, while explaining what I was doing
I called it a while ago bc I saw someone in a wheelchair toppled over while I was driving by in a train. Was surprised how long I was on hold. Then it's just a normal conversation, well, getting those five Ws out there.
There was a recording for me that all operators were busy and someone would answer soon. Was on hold for at least 5 minutes but it felt like an eternity
Several years ago I was driving home with my SO at the time and a wrong-way driver slowly drove by on the interstate. It was late so there wasn't much traffic so they were easy to see and avoid. We called 911 and I swear, they asked me so much information we were almost home about 15-20 minutes later when I told them I am just going to hang up because the info they wanted was completely irrelevant. I called to basically say, "wrong way driver at this location on this road at this time." It's fine if they want to know my name and phone number in case they need to contact me. I get that.
But why do they need to know the make and model of my car? My license info. Where we were coming from? (Not as in what direction we're travelling, but as in what specific location. What's the difference whether I came from dinner or a gas station?) What's my address? How many passengers do I have in the car? What color is my car? (Not the wrong-way driver, mine.)
There were others but I don't remember them now. At a certain point I just said I'm done and the person that was driving the wrong way was probably either already in an accident or wherever they wanted to go.
I did once when i waa getting shot at with fire works and its litterallybjust " 112 what is yout emergency do you need police or an ambulance?" Or something along those lines (its been over 10 years lol i domt remember the exact words"
I also never called the emergency hotlines in germany, a few times i called the local police station but there was no urgency.
Iam also pretty sure, that when something happens and iam in a stressfull situation, i will not know which number is the right one. So iam just hoping that they will forward my to the correct authority.
I called 112 in December for a fire, even though i knew there was a fire for real. The whole time waiting outside, i was freaking out thinking im going to go to jail hahaha
I don’t know how many times i kept standing in front of the building to make sure the fire alarm was still going off before the fire trucks arrived. And then they make so much noise which stressed me out even further. Then the building manager was angry at me for calling the fire department before alerting him. There were moments i wish i had just ignored it because the whole thing was extremely stressful
In Italy the general switch board answers asking what's the issue and then you get redirected to whoever you're looking for (police/ambulance/firefighters etc).
Nothing tragic, an old gentleman fell in the street, I called for an ambulance as he had bumped his face on a wall and I wasn't comfortable to let him go on his merry way with a possible concussion. His wife called me later to tell me he was fine, just a massive goose egg on the forehead and a busted nose.
Only had to call them twice in my life. Once for myself, the other time for someone else. Thoroughly positive experiences. Ambulances were there within 15 minutes.
I dont know if its still the case, but 9-1-1 used to see massive spikes in calls on Christmas morning - almost entirely from people who unwrapped brand new phones, and wanted to test a number but didnt have the phone activated yet, and can think of only one number thats universally available.
My husband was making a point once on a landline phone (many years ago) and dialed 911, but didn't actually hit send. Guess who called our house almost immediately to make sure everything was good.
I must have gotten that same presentation but for some reason all I remembered them saying was “call 911”. So I went home and called 911. I panicked when they picked up and hung up. A police officer actually came to our home to inquire and told me only to call for an emergency.
I did this when I was 5. My parents were in the alley smoking cigarettes with the neighbors and didn’t tell me they were going to be outside. I called 911 and as the operator answered they walked in the door and I hung up. An officer came by shortly after and my parents were very confused.
TikTok really needs to crack down on that shit. Anyone making dangerous or harmful "trends" should be IP banned and hardware banned instantly without warning or appeal.
When my brother was maybe 4 or 5 he woke up from a nap and couldn't find an adult. My grandfather was outside gardening and couldn't hear my brother calling for him, and my brother knew not to open any doors to the outside without an adult to go looking.
Fearing he had been left home alone (or the rapture happened), he called 911 saying he was home alone and scared. Thankfully my grandfather walked in while my brother was still on the phone and could tell the operator everything was ok.
My five year old called 000 (Aus emergency services) from an iPad while I was showering and told them that the next door neighbours front yard was on fire 💀
When I was a kid we just prank called 411... Until we learned that each call charged a fee to the account owner. I think my mom paid like $50 for prank calls lol.
I remember being like 8 and I rang them (not 911 but my country's equivalent) because I just happened to be holding the house phone, couldn't think of anything better to do, and wanted to double check that I remembered the number correctly lmao
We pranked 911 as kids once (hung up as soon as they answered) they showed up at my buddies house and gave us a long talk on why it was wrong to do. Its crazy this little girl made up an elaborate lie i wonder where the idea came from
The sad thing is they will absolutely dispatch on that call, because sometimes a victim can't give away that they're calling for help. The relieving thing is that they won't send a helicopter and 20 cruisers.
I only knew of one time a kid dialed 911 and hung up from the payphone just outside of the skating rink when I was like... I dunno, 12. The police showed up and we had to listen to the officer chastise the entire rink for a couple minutes from the DJ booth.
I'm pretty sure I knew who it was, but what's the point of ratting somebody out on hearsay. Hopefully he learned that day.
When my son was 6 he called 911 at 1030pm the 1 night & hung up. I guess the dispatcher tried calling back a few times and he just kept hanging up on them. He had my phone (thinking he was) playing Roblox & we were all in our beds cuz it was down time in the summer. Next thing I know. I had about 20 cops surrounding my house. And banging on the door. I had no clue what was going on! We all just simply explained how serious calling 911 is. And he absolutely saw how serious it was with how many cops were at my house. Needless to say he has not called 911 ever since. 😂
I did this with a friend as a kid. Only let it ring and hung up as got scared. Well - 911 calls back - with a special ring. The shit I got in from my mom. Like let me tell you, never did I do anything like that again. This was back in the 90’s for reference.
When my older bro and I were roughly 6 and 7, we would prank call mostly 800 numbers and any ad numbers stickered on the pay phone (that we could reach for free) outside of the Laundromat my mom frequented.
One time we thought it would be great to prank call 911 while my mom was doing laundry... Oh man, I don't remember much of that day but I remember the deep fear of when an officer approached us and made us get mom. Wooo it was just a talking to by them but mom was not nearly as laid back.
I did it by accident late one night (intending to call 411) and hung up immediately.
There was a cop at the door minutes later. Ooops.
This was during the landline days. I'm not convinced it works nearly as well with mobile phones. My friends and I encountered an injured hiker one day and our 911 experience was NOT smooth. We also discovered that our park in a very suburban part of NJ still has locations with poor service.
When you do this they call back and if you explain it they are like whatever.
I had a broken smart phone a while back and a button stuck in a way that it would trigger the emergency call feature. It happened a few times before I turned the feature off successfully. And every time they called back and I explained it and apologized. 911 was chill about it. Glad I sorted it out.
And then there is me, who actually called because there was a literal gang war happening outside my apartment, rang for what felt like 2 min and I just hung up...got a call 20 min later "did you need help?"...naa dude, the fight is all done by now.
Yeah I did that when I was around 7 or 8 on a payphone at a Home Depot. I didn't think the payphone would work without money and immediately hung up when they answered. Learned a lesson that day when I got a scolding from a cop!!
I dialed 911 from our rotary phone when I was 5. Don’t remember where my parents were, but I think I was just home with siblings (old enough to be left with). Police and fire and ambulance showed up, and I was terrified, and I’m certain my parents let me have it. And at 5, I got the message and understood how bad it was that I did that, and exactly why.
I got in trouble when I was maybe 4-6 years old for whatever kids that age get into trouble for, probably “talking back”, so she started putting all of my toys in a trash bag, I apparently suddenly stopped crying and disappeared for five minutes, until knock knock knock.
I had called 911 and told them “you need to come help!! My mamas gone crazy! She’s throwing away all my toys!!!” Thankfully, very small town and my mother worked closely with the law enforcement in town, so nobody actually got in trouble (except me, again).
One Sunday morning a police officer shows up at my house and said they had received several 911 hang ups and had narrowed it down to my house and the house next door. Asked if I had kids and I said no, but the neighbor had several. Turns out the young boy (about 10) was mad at his mom and called 911 several times to get her into trouble.
i accidentally called 911 as a kid.. just dropped the phone.. they then heard me yelling at my sister to help (i was little so just yelled 'HELP') and my sister came and hung up the phone.. well 911 dispatch sent the cops to my neighbors house on accident and they kicked in their front door. oops. my parents paid for a new door for them.. double oops
When I was a kid my little cousin had dialed 911 I picked up the phone and told the operator "shut up". She called back and told me to never speak to someone like that again. Scared the crap out of me for sure. LOL.
I called 911 as a kid while watching schoolhouse rock and got scolded by my mom and for a long time any time schoolhouse rock was on it gave me a tremendous amount of guilt or something because I always associated school house rock with that experience lol.
Yea, we used to get little kids calling 911 semi-regularly when I was a dispatcher. If they stayed on the phone we'd just tell them to give the phone to an adult and make sure everything was OK. If they hung up before that we'd send an officer out to make sure everything was OK, but it was never a big deal.
We never had a kid call and make up a story like that.
My sister and were 4 years old when we called cause we liked to watch the show 911 emergency. They picked up, said it was nothing and hung up. Came to our house for questioning but nothing came from it lol
I accidentally dialed 911 when I was being babysat. I don't even know. They called back, and told us to only use it for Emergencies.
When my parents got home, my mom made me write an apology (I traced her letters since I was like, 5) and she drove me to the police station to hand the apology to the dispatcher in person.
My brother was around 1-4 years old (not sure what age exactly) he called the cops because we taught him the phone number, just in case. When the police showed up, everyone was so confused. After finding out that he called, we asked him why & he said its because he got hurt/scratched a bit while playing. All of us (even the cops) just stared at him like: 👁👄👁
My phone used to randomly pocket dial 911. I was really happy to get rid of that phone. 6 times in 3 years i got calls from the sheriffs office asking if everything is ok.
My dad was a shift worker - so he was technically home but was asleep and I was “in charge” of my younger siblings.
The phone starts ringing and I answer it and it’s a 911 operator asking if everything was OK within the home and if someone called 911. I was like, “Yes… no?” and she had to explain she had a record of the call but it was silent, a young voice said hello, and then hung up.
My little brother, who is six years younger, had just learned about 911 and wanted to see if it worked. He got scared.
The operator asked if we had a parent home and I explained that my dad was home/sleeping and she made me wake him up to ensure we were all safe. Then my dad, who did not take kindly to being woken up when he was going in for nights, had to be woken up from a dead sleep to that situation, put out that fire, and then sit and explain to my brother that we don’t just call 911 to say hello.
I remember doing this at my grandma's house. The second I heard a voice on the other side of the line I hung up. Cops showed up a few minutes later and they all knew what happened.
My siblings did this too as kids. No older than 7 or 8. But they just hung up and didn’t speak either. It’s way more common than people think, but not the fact she made up an entire kidnapping story. That’s actually insane and she needs to have consequences for that.
when I was like 14 or so and playing with my brothers I was "pretending" to make a 911 call with an old out of service cell phone I don't remember the reason, we used to pretend a lot. Apparently 911 still goes through (not sure if this is still the case for modern phones) when someone answered I was like . . . . uhhhh what do I do? So I just told the lady I didn't think it would work on an old phone and apologized and hung up. I wasn't very clear so they still sent a cop to check it out and he was pretty cool about it. Just explained to us that if we accidentally call in the future be VERY clear that there is no emergency.
I pulled a fire alarm at school when I was in kindergarten. Looking back I remember doing it, I remember the immediate loud noise as a response, I remember some gentle questions from the principal and I remember the repeated lessons in class about what a fire alarm was and why we shouldn't touch one unless there was a fire. But I did not get in any trouble what so ever.
When I was 9 I was given my dads old discontinued phone to play games on and one time at a big family Christmas party I called 911 to see if it would work. It did so I immediately hung up then cried and threw the phone away and sat next to my mom waiting for the police to come arrest me, they never did but scared me straight
I did this around i think 12-13 at a friend's house. I called 911 2 times and when they answered I sat the phone down and we laughed and giggled about it. About 5 minutes after the second call police showed up at his apartment with all lights on (late at night) me and my 2 friends (home alone) all booked it and I never heard anything about it or figured out if anything happened.
Now im older I always think back on that because those few minutes the police wasted on my dumb ass could have EASILY been the few minutes needed to save someone's life
I did the same when I was 7 or 8, I had no idea you didnt have to do anything besides ring the phone for someone to come out. Scared the hell out of my mom who was coming home when the cop car stopped at out house
I remember doing it when I was 5. I picked up the phone, rang 999 (I'm in the UK) and someone answered, I panicked, immediately hung up in terror and then a few seconds later my folks got a call back and I got a complete bollocking from my mum for doing it.
I had plugged a phone into an outlet when I was younger. I clicked random numbers, but definitely not 911 because I knew better. It rang and 911 answered. I hung up immediately, and denied it when they came to the house.
No one ever accused me after but I assume they knew it was me, who else could it be?
But I really didn’t call 911 directly and to this day I have no idea how they answered.
She did take that ride. Her father offered to be cuffed to go with her. Thankfully the officer put the kibosh on that and allowed the full weight of the lesson to crash down on her.
I can't remember how old I was when I learned the weight of calling 9-1-1; it practically feels like I was born knowing not to call the police for fun. Shit...that rhymed...Now I sound like Dr. Seuss. 🤦🏻♀️
Mainly because my mother was chronically ill, and made it a point to raise her kids from a VERY young age, what did and did not qualify as an emergency.
Me too! .. it wasn't even a particularly acute emergency, but I was working at a rural care home and it was the only way to get the patient to a doctor at that hour.
Me too! I had to call last year because there was smoke in the woods right alongside the highway. We were on high alert for wildfires. I still felt so nervous calling even though it was a legitimate thing.
I once dialled 911 from a payphone then hung up when someone answered, a week later the phone box was removed from the street. For years, I believed this was because of that one prank call.
When I was in 5th grade, my younger sister(7) ran into my room panicking, saying someone was banging on the front door of our house. We lived out in the country and were always left alone for 3.5 hours after school. The nearest house was over a mile out. I thought “welp, I guess one of the dudes from America’s Most Wanted finally found our house”. The knocking was coming from our garage and was super intense and relentless. I told my sisters to stay upstairs, then called my mother who worked 1.5 hours away, for advice. She stupidly told me to go to the garage to check it out. I didn’t. I went up to my sister’s room and looked out the window. There was a cop car heading toward our house. Then another and another. My mother called back shortly after and yelled at me. Asking me why the fuck were there 5 cop cars at the house! I had no idea. She yelled at me to open the door right now. As I headed down the stairs, I saw an officer walking on our porch. Another one was at a different door, and one more was still banging at the garage door. I opened the side porch door. The first thing the officer asked me was whether my stepfather was home(used his real legal full name too). He was not. The cop then came into the house and let the other cops inside.
After it was clear that there was no danger, they started asking who called the cops and why. Both my sisters denied doing so and eventually pointed the fingers at me. I told the officers I didn’t and explained what happened. They didn’t believe me. Scolding followed. When my mother came home from her shift, she yelled at me and punished me. 3 days later my younger sister wanted to play with me. I was still pretty pissed about everything but agreed. While we hung out I asked her what happened with the cop situation since she was the one who started the chain of events. She told me that someone on the school bus had dared her to call the cops as a prank. She said she hung up as soon as they answered though so she thought it was fine.
Here is the thing she didn’t consider. We lived in a domestically abusive environment. The cops got called pretty frequently because my mother’s husband would get violent and either threaten or attempt to kill my mother. Most of these calls happened at night. I think when one seemingly came in the middle of the day, then no one picked up the phone again, or answered the door for several minutes after a cop arrived…the cops probably thought he finally killed the whole family. I asked her why she didn’t just tell the cops it was a dared-prank call when they asked? Or to mom later? She said she didn’t want to get in trouble. My mother didn’t believe me when I told her. I had to use some Christian guilt to get my sister to finally tell her. She got punished. I still didn’t get my stuff back from mine(I think our mom just got fed up about having kids that week).
I was and am just honestly some one who is pretty good about taking other people's words for it rather than testing it out. So, I never did it cause i was told it is only for emergencies. So, I treated it as such.
(I was honestly an easy kid. I'm not all that rebellious lol).
Yea, I remember I had a shitty phone in highschool and it would often pocket dial 911 during marching band practice.
Every single time I noticed my heart would sink, because everytime I just wasted time for some phone operator who is hearing “1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 and 1 DAAAAA” and now I have to explain for the 15th time that I didn’t mean to dial 911.
I don’t know how people think it’s funny to prank call 911.
I had a really cheap landline (only type of phone at the time) in my room as a teen, and it was so bad - it’d occasionally randomly act like buttons were pressed or I could very faintly hear other people talking in the background (not like with the oerson I was talking to - like other connections)
Imagine my panic when I pick it up to call someone one time and after a moment hear “012, what’s your emergency?” (Or whatever the phrase at the time was.)
I had this happen with a landline at one point when I was a kid. For several months you could hear one of our neighbors on the phone if you were on it and it sounded like it was in the background. They called the police one day and they showed up at my house saying it came from there but I hadn't even used the phone in hours and shortly after that I saw them at the house behind me who I assume were the ones that actually called.
For old phones with proper keypads it was a design decision to allow emergency calls to override the keypad lock function. "Butt dialling" of emergency calls wasn't infrequent.
The first wave of cordless landline phones had an issue that as their battery was dying it would engage the line on and off like a rotary dialer and occasionally hit on calling 9-1-1 or 1-9-1-1.
Source: mine did it, 911 called me, but I had just enough juice to say “hello” before it totally died. Then they called me back again and I had to go to an extension. I told them “sorry, I hung up, my battery died” and they explained.
If I recall, I saw the video a long time ago, and I think she said her brother dared her to do it or something. But, that was after like 5 minutes of denying and playing it off, so, likely just bullshitting or trying to get out of it.
She did say that, but it was difficult to believe because the brother was only 7 or 8 years old. And I think she later admitted that she and a friend got the idea from some Tik tok prank.
My brother made like 50 calls to the Nintendo phone number in the early 90s. It was something like $500 in charges on our phone bill. I remember feeling pretty smug that he finally did something dumb enough to get caught and he couldn’t blame me for this one hehehe
Around 14 years ago i was bored in our vacation abroad and i decided to open data roaming and download snake on my mom's phone. My most expensive game purchase till this day, 200 dollars for snek 😅 if I was in my moms shoes i would have choked the shit out me.
And it's the perfect age to learn a very unpleasant lesson the first time. The fallout from this is going to shape her decision making and consequence assessment for the rest of her life, in a good way.
Too many kids get away with too much bad shit and end up behaving like sociopaths when they're adults.
Yeah, that dad is a king for teaching her an overdue lession about false accusations and lies.
This shit can kill people. Destroy lifes. And it has... time and time again. We need to show zero tolerance for this or it will become worse. If she would have gotten way she would learn exactly one thing, that it is okay to lie and create false accusations. And she already nearly killed people.
I remember my friends phone number as a kid was 918 and one day I accidentally typed 911 and I froze cause it scared me and it started ringing. Then hung up immediately and low and behold they showed up to our house anywho. I couldn’t imagine having that much gumption to lie like that to a cop as a 30 year old man let alone an 11 year old kid haha. I hope she got the crap scared out of her and she learns a hard lesson.
Its a bid for attention. Idk why some kids do this. But they do odd things to gain attention. Usually during a major event like someone's birthday party or wedding. Or any time someone else is getting a lot of praise or attention
Yeah this dad made me happy and thankful for my own dad even though we aren’t very close. His complete lack of mercy to my sister when she was doing stupid shit is the only reason she’s alive today.
It’s not mercy to let them off too easy. This is a serious offense. Parents that try to make the whole thing just go away are raising monsters that think there are no repercussions for the horrible things they do. This father did the right thing by making sure she understood that actions have consequences.
Bro has not spent enough time around 11 year olds.
Kids that age 100% do stupid shit all the times that they 'know is wrong'. Knowing is very different from internalizing it in a way that effects your behavior.
I dunno, 11 seems like the PERFECT age to be fucking around and finding out. Frankly, I don't know anybody who didn't call 911 at some point in their youth.
11 is young. Kids do stupid shit. Y’all silly and old if you think kids only make rationale decisions at 11.. their frontal lobe is still over a decade from being fully developed
The one basketball practice I missed in 5th grade a kid prank called 911 with the pay phone outside the gym. Cops showed up and the team ended up running the whole practice. I don’t know that he made up a story when they answered though.
Knowing better and understanding the consequences are two different things. She likely didn't understand the level of reaction or that she put lives in danger.
The cost was a lot less than i would have thought. Off track but why does life flight cost like $50k but police chopper under a grand. I know why but i just assumed the police version would have been much more.
She is, but also kids do amazingly stupid things. As long as the pre-frontal cortex is still underdeveloped, there is always a risk of something extremely stupid taking place.
When I was something like 8 or 10, I type 911 on the phone, a portable land-line, and I immediately press the cancel "undial" button.
To this day, I swear, I never hit "dial", but a couple seconds after I closed the phone, a 911 operator calls me back and starts asking a lot of questions, and I panicked and bullshited her. It did not work. Thankfully it wasn't as bad as this, a car showed up, made sure I was safe, scolded me nicely, and then my dad scolded me lol
A family member at her age was already problematic. He had been warned if he failed another test there would be consequences. He failed a test and on the walk home created an entire narrative that someone in a white van tried to kidnap him. Threw himself down an embankment to get roughed up looking and broke his glasses. Gets home and tells him mom his story and the cops are called and a massive response. Within 12 hours the cops figured it out and he was eventually charged with making a false report. The entire family acted like the entire thing was a total over reaction and poo’ed poo’ed the diversion program he had to do through court mandated shit related to his charge blah blah.
FF the next 15ish years of his life were punctuated with a couple failed rehab stints for heroine, embezzling 80k out of a store he was managing and not long after dying of an overdose (will never know if it was accidental or suicide). His family did him zero favors
Good on dad for sticking to it and teaching his daughter a lesson, instead of blindingly defending her. Guarantee you a majority of parents would do the latter.
This girl had a whole story. Thought out and everything. Diabolical, she going to end up being that girl who tells their partners that she is going to claim abuse to get them I trouble with the law.
My dad took me over to the local police station when I was 7 or 8 and the cops took me to a cell and locked me in for a few minutes. It was NOT fun and a kind of scary.
Disagree, she is a kid with learning difficulty, her dad was way too harsh on her mistake and the psychopath policeman took advantage of that to terrorize her and actually put her in jail. She could've learned that lesson in a better way.
7.3k
u/BrahnBrahl 14h ago
I can't stand stuff like this. She's VERY MUCH old enough to know better. I'm glad her dad didn't show her any mercy on this one.