Why Not to Play with Handcuffs

Funny story. We had an overnight for the junior guys at church Friday night. We did X-Bowling then crashed at Paul's place. Late night, little sleep, the usual (Side Note: hardwood floors are just that - hard!).

Some of the guys there are a part of Paul's C-Group (small group, discipleship group, whatever you want to call it), and they goof around alot. One of the things they like to do is use Paul's 2 pair of handcuffs to handcuff each other to things/people. This event was taking place late this morning and was about to come to an end when an unexpected twist occured.

I had the key and was trying to unlock Paul's wrist, which was cuffed to another guy's wrist, when one of the other students came at me with the other pair of cuffs. I instinctively recoiled, protecting myself from being cuffed. However, since I was the one holding the key at the time, this was not a good move. While pulling my arms in to myself, somehow the key snapped off inside the cuff I was trying to unlock, and while it would make sense that if Paul has 2 cuffs he would have 2 keys, that just isn't the case.

And let me now just say, these are real police-grade handcuffs. I don't fully understand how Paul got them, but trust me when I say theses we're the toy cuffs you might have played with as a child. No, without the now broken key, there was no getting them off.

This left Paul and Eliot (the other student) cuffed together and no way of fixing the problem. I really felt like I was in an episode of I Love Lucy or something.

So from there, Paul decides that we need to head up to Snohomish where his roommate works at an autobody shop. This was also an adventure, as he proced to cut the cuffs off (which is really not easy at all).

I'll spare you the details, but we were there for 1.5 - 2 hours to get the cuffs off both Paul and Eliot, and it was quite involved. Eliot may have a scar from the heat from the saw to cut it off. Cool, huh?

Yes, this was my Saturday. Not quite what I planned, but interresting none the less. Let that be a lesson to you: don't goof around when trying to unlock handcuffs, unless you want to stay in them for good.