So, Gary Coleman has been dead for almost a week now. (They're still planning his funeral. I'm assuming that once they find an appropriately sized shoe box to bury him in, things will start moving along.) I had thought about approaching this topic sooner, but given the slightly out of control way that he seemed to go through his day to day life, I figured that there would actually be something new to talk about if I just gave it a little time so that more details could start seeping out. Good thing I did. They've seeped.
I've always wondered about his marriage to the Amazon woman, Shannon Price. (She seems to be really tall. Then again, standing next to him, she might be only five feet tall. I suppose that my reference in this matter might be a bit skewed.) While she's about twenty years younger than him, give or take a couple of years (and feet, while you're at it), their maturity level seemed to be about even...if they were both 5. Neither one of them seemed to be the brightest bulb on the tree. 
According to Ms. Price, the diminutive Mr. Coleman was prone to throwing fits when he didn't get his way. In the past, some of his fits included throwing a printer, throwing a fax machine, beating his head against a wall, and screaming in a high pitched state of rage that sounded an awful lot like what a 2-year old does when things aren't going just quite right. To say that he was short tempered would be accurate in a variety of ways (not to mention it would make for an awesome pun).
And maybe that's why, whenever I saw the two of them interviewed together (most notably on
Divorce Court, where it was revealed that their brief, odd little marriage was never consummated, perhaps because Mr. Coleman did not have access to a ladder), I always found her to come across as rather detached. Don't get me wrong. I don't think that one should be buddying up to someone else who is prone to hurling large computer peripherals during fits of dissatisfaction. I'm just saying that she didn't seem like she was all that into him. That's all.
And judging from the 911 call that she made, it's really difficult to tell that she even liked the guy very much. She was rather...what's the word I want? Hmm...upset? Eh. Maybe, but that's not where I'm headed with this. Umm....panicked? Kind of, but not for reasons that one would think. Indifferent and annoyed with the whole thing after he fell down at some point and hit his head and was bleeding everywhere? Yeah! That's it! That's the term I was looking for. She seemed very inconvenienced by the whole ordeal.
The gossipy folks over yonder at TMZ have been kind enough to provide us with the audio of the
911 call that Shannon Price made from their dollhouse home in Santaquin, Utah. (Of course, they're not going to let me embed the audio here, but the wonderful, newsy folks over there at the New York Daily News will let me embed the audio, which you will find at the bottom of this post.) Now, look, I've been to Santaquin. Many a time. There isn't much there. It's fairly empty and in the middle of nowhere. I would imagine that it would take medical personnel a while to respond to an emergency call. Thus, it's going to be pertinent upon the person making the call to be a little bit more helpful than Ms. Price was! 
Ms. Price calls 911 (at least she could figure that much out) and when the operator asks what the problem is, her response is, "Um....um....I just found...I had my husband go make me some food downstairs. I heard this big bang. I went downstairs. Blood everywhere. I don't know if he's okay. I'm not down there right now because I have seizures if I get stressed out. I'm gonna seize." What now?
She has seizures if she gets stressed out? Is that something new? Regardless as to the novelty of it all, she wasn't down there with him? She goes down, sees her husband on the floor and bleeding profusely, runs upstairs to get the phone and leaves him down there without much of any intent of returning to his side? How comforting for the man. He was a lucky little dude. Or not.
Now, the 911 operator seems to get that it would be important for her to go down there to be with him. If nothing else, at least to try and stop the bleeding. I mean, if the guy is unconscious, is she really not going to even try to go and help stop the bleeding?! For reals? Ma'am, you are a real piece of work, that's for sure.
She continues talking to the operator by telling her, "His head is bloody. There's blood all over the floor. I don't know what happened. I really don't know what happened. I just heard this bang and I
just went down there and he's on the floor. Send someone quick because I don't even know if he's going to be alive. There's a lot of blood on the floor." The 911 operator responds with, "Is there any way that you can go down there at all?" And I'll give that woman props for saying it as calmly and as kindly as she did. I don't know that those would have been my choice of words in this situation. (Mine might have been more like, "Lady, you're going to have to toughen up and get your ass down there and help your freaking husband so that he doesn't die. I don't care if you're a little squeamish. If you have a seizure, don't worry! Medical personnel are on the way!") To which Ms. Price responded, "I don't know. I'll try. I mean...I don't know." In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, what a maroon.
The conversation doesn't get much better than that, but it does follow a similar theme. See if you notice it in the dialogue that they shared.
911 operator: How old is your husband?...I'm going to stay on the line with you, OK
Shannon "More About Me" Price: Cool. I've just been like...I've been sick and I really don't want to be traumatized right now. (Yeah, that'd be awful. No sense in you being traumatized whilst your husband is suffering from a massive head wound downstairs. You just stay put, little lady.)
911 operator: Is he conscious?
Shannon "I Need Some Binoculars" Price: Um, no…He's was like bubbling at the mouth. I'll see. Gary! (Mind you, she's yelling down the stairs at him because she won't go down there.)
911 operator: Is he breathing?
Shannon "From The Watchtower" Price: Yeah, I can hear him moving around. Gary? Are you OK?
911 operator: Can you tell him to put pressure on the wound?
Shannon "I'm Missing The Point" Price: Well, it's on the back of his head. So I don't know if he can. (Oh, my GOD. The man is severely injured. Of course he can't put pressure on his own head. He might not even know where his head is at this point! Get your Amazon ass down there and help the man! What is wrong with you?!)
911 operator: He has to put pressure on that wound
Shannon "I'll Do This From A Distance" Price, yelling from the top of the stairs: Gary, you've
gotta put pressure on your wound. No, Gary. Don't! Roxy!...(Roxy seems to be their dog. Good to know that she's making sure that the animals are all present and accounted for during this time.) He's lethargic. I can't really help him. I just need help quick. (Oh, but you CAN help him, you nitwit! You're just NOT going to! You clearly are capable of having about as much compassion as does a dining room table.) I just can't be here with the blood. I'm sorry. I just can't do it. I can't. I have my dog. Come on! Gary, what is wrong?! (You have to ask what's wrong? He's massively bleeding from his dome. He's alone in the downstairs of his house. He hears your annoying voice coming from somewhere and yelling at him. I think that there's plenty wrong.)
This sad tale continues along the same lines for a little while longer.
Shannon "But I Have Seizures" Price: There's blood going all over and I can't do anything.
He's sitting up now. He's sitting up, but his head is all bloody in the back. And I can't drive. Because, you know, like I said, I have seizures and I've been sick and you know, I can't do anything right now, you know. OH, my God. I don't know what happened. I just asked him if he could go make me some food and he was like "OK" and then I don't know. But his head is all bloody and gross, you know.
911 operator (who deserves a medal or a raise or something for not screaming at that woman by now): He's conscious now?
Shannon "I State The Obvious" Price: He's conscious, but he's not, like, with it. And I don't know if he had a seizure. (No. You're the one who has seizures, sweetie. Try and keep up.) I don't know if he just hit his head and fell. Cause he was like, I mean, he wasn't in like convulsions or anything, you know what I mean? (long silence) I mean, I can't get around right now as it is, you know what I mean? (Actually, no. I don't know. But I certainly don't want you explaining it to me NOW.)
Saintly 911 operator: Shannon, can you help him put pressure on the back of his head?
Shannon "Completely Useless" Price: No. I can't. It's like all bloody. And he's like, not with it. I asked him and he's....
911 operator who is getting tired of this crap: He's going to need to put pressure on that. Is there any way that you can give him a towel?
Shannon "No Help At All" Price: Yeah. I can try...(inaudible)...I just don't want him to freaking
die, you know? I'm freaking out." (You can hear her taking her time an ambling down the stairs.) Gary, don't move. Don't move! You have to try and put this on your head. (I'm assuming this is where she throws the towel at him and hopes that he's lucid enough to figure out which way is up so he can help save himself.) Put pressure on it! (Good idea. Yell at the man. That should do it.) There is like blood all fricking over....I don't even know why you're standing. (Good. That's it! Keep berating the man as he bleeds in front of you. Perfect. You should be a doctor.) Here!
This is just making me sad. Very sad. I don't know what killed the guy, but surely her pansiness and her unwillingness to help her own husband played some sort of a part in it. How much blood did he lose because she was not willing to put pressure on his wound? I realize she's seizure-ific or whatever, but it's the man's life! Here's the end of the 911 call (it follows the same vein of patheticness as the dialogue which preceded it):
911 operator: Tell him to sit down.
Shannon "I'm Getting Annoyed" Price: You need to sit down! Gary, sit down! Sit down! (Um, that woman said "tell" not "yell".)
(Seems to be yelling from far away)
(Gary says something)
Shannon "My Floor!" Price: Look at the floor! Sit down! Sit down!
911 operator who is praying the paramedics are there: Check and see if they've arrived.
Shannon "I Can't Answer The Door" Price: Tell them to come in. I'm gagging. I've got blood on myself. I can't deal. (I think I might actually have a hatred for this chick.)
This is where the 911 operator tells her to go to the front door and open it because if she's gagging, she wants her to go and open the door and get away from what is making her gag. That's all that Mr. Coleman would have needed to hear. His beloved bride, gagging at his inconvenient gash in his cranial unit which is causing her all sorts of internal discomfort. But I noticed that it seemed like not less than 3 second after the 911 operator tells her this that she is opening the door.
Shannon "This Is All About Me" Price: I just can't stand very long, you know? And I'm like, panic stricken. The call ends about 10 seconds after this last round of her whining about what her problems are. Whatever.
The entire time that she was on the phone with the 911 operator, her voice was constantly as calm as if she was just ordering a pizza. The only time when her voice was not calm was when she was screaming at her injured husband. I find this odd. I find this sad. And I find this incredibly disturbing. She spent more time telling the 911 operator about herself and what was wrong with her and what grossed her out and what might happen to her than she did talking about Gary. I don't usually (directly) call names, but she has definitely earned the title of "bitch".
Look, I understand that people get lonely. I understand that you feel bad when your relationship or your marriage or whatever you had going on with someone else doesn't work out. It sucks. We all know it sucks. And the sooner that we replace that person that is missing (whether we threw the loser out or whether the loser ran as fast as they could in the opposite direction), the sooner that it stops sucking (or start sucking, which is better in a couple of instances). While I realize that it may seem like something that is extremely urgent that you want to have happen and that it may feel like an emergency, you're going to have to find that replacement mate in some other fashion other than dialing 911 five times in one hour. Wait. What now? 
have been rough. Last week when she moved into a new apartment, Audrey, who friends call Kay, decided to celebrate." Hmm. I'm guessing that if you're getting divorced and having to move into a new apartment, you're not really going to be celebrating quite as much as you are going to be drinking yourself into some sort of stupor. 
Kay explains that "I drank too much vodka and I got lonely and sad because all my friends are with my husband now and I have no family." Yes, that would make one lonely and sad to be in that situation. I'm not saying that it would make one pick up the phone and call 911 looking for a new husband, but I am saying that the lonely and sad part is probably legit. 
fries short of a Happy Meal. Afterwards, she explained, "The officer said you cannot abuse the system we have serious things to respond to and this is not one of them and he said you need to learn this lesson, so I went to prison and I wouldn't trade any of it for anything in the world." Oh, how I only wish that reporting these days wasn't so completely craptastic that the reporter would have asked her why she wouldn't trade any of it for anything in the world. I can think of a whole lot of things that I'd trade three days in jail for. She can't think of a one. Hmmm. 
Speaking of craptastic reporting, explain to me what in the world this little tidbit is supposed to mean: "Kay admits she was drinking and says she was looking for her husband, not a love connection." Seriously. What, exactly, does that mean? We know she was looking for a husband. That's the first thing she said. "Get me that husband." It seems fairly clear. Why would we think that she was really looking for a love connection (whatever that is supposed to mean)? Was Chuck Woolery the 911 operator?
But in the end, "Kay says she is sorry she called 911, but says her drunk dial ultimately pushed her toward the straight and narrow." What does that mean? Not the part about being sorry! I know what being sorry means! The part about the straight. And the narrow! I'm not so sure that I consider NOT calling 911 for a husband being on "the straight and narrow". I call that "explaining to a moron what is and isn't OK". 
fries short of a Happy Meal. Afterwards, she explained, "The officer said you cannot abuse the system we have serious things to respond to and this is not one of them and he said you need to learn this lesson, so I went to prison and I wouldn't trade any of it for anything in the world." Oh, how I only wish that reporting these days wasn't so completely craptastic that the reporter would have asked her why she wouldn't trade any of it for anything in the world. I can think of a whole lot of things that I'd trade three days in jail for. She can't think of a one. Hmmm. 
Speaking of craptastic reporting, explain to me what in the world this little tidbit is supposed to mean: "Kay admits she was drinking and says she was looking for her husband, not a love connection." Seriously. What, exactly, does that mean? We know she was looking for a husband. That's the first thing she said. "Get me that husband." It seems fairly clear. Why would we think that she was really looking for a love connection (whatever that is supposed to mean)? Was Chuck Woolery the 911 operator?
anything" days in jail), "The judge ordered her to attend alcoholics anonymous meetings, which she is attending daily." That seems reasonable. Too bad that they don't have any meetings about things that are better than jail. Sounds to me like she could use some of those meetings as well. 
anything" days in jail), "The judge ordered her to attend alcoholics anonymous meetings, which she is attending daily." That seems reasonable. Too bad that they don't have any meetings about things that are better than jail. Sounds to me like she could use some of those meetings as well. 
But in the end, "Kay says she is sorry she called 911, but says her drunk dial ultimately pushed her toward the straight and narrow." What does that mean? Not the part about being sorry! I know what being sorry means! The part about the straight. And the narrow! I'm not so sure that I consider NOT calling 911 for a husband being on "the straight and narrow". I call that "explaining to a moron what is and isn't OK". 
