Hobbyists and home repair enthusiasts have been known to share tales of accidental adhesions, the consequences of which are usually benign and easily remedied. "Have you had a little superglue mishap? Get your fingers stuck together?" asks one practical advice columnist. "Use an old wash cloth and nail polish remover to clean that melted mess in no time!" For what it's worth, I'm told that only nail polish removers containing acetone will work, but this is still handy advice in sticky situations.
Superglue pranks
From The Sun, a London tabloid, in 1996:
It took six firefighters, two doctors and two police officers five hours to get Gary Foxley free from the toilet ring at McDonald's, where someone had poured superglue all over it.Rescuers had no choice, the report continues, but to disconnect the toilet and carry it out of the restaurant with Foxley in situ to a waiting ambulance. I'll admit to being skeptical of this story, mainly because the reporter goes on to claim that the restaurant's staff didn't become aware of the emergency until Foxley "pushed the alarm button." Are those common in public restrooms in Great Britain?
Disbelieve if you will, but according to the BBC a strangely similar incident happened more recently in the United States, where, the story goes, "a gambler sued a casino for 30,500 pounds after claiming he got stuck to a glue-smeared toilet seat and had to waddle through the casino for help." (Drat those American toilets — no panic button!)
'Superglue Revenge'
And then there are the stories of, um, interpersonal bonding — the suspected criminal who superglued himself to his girlfriend to prevent police from arresting him; the woman who affixed herself to her foreign-born husband to stop authorities from deporting him; and the red-faced woman who showed up in the emergency room with both hands stuck to her boyfriend's private parts. Add a motive like revenge to such scenarios and you are smack in the middle of urban legends territory (in case you had any doubt up to this point).
The best known of all cyanoacrylatic abuse tales is "Superglue Revenge," in which an angry wife/girlfriend allegedly waits until her philandering or abusive husband/boyfriend falls asleep then glues his penis to another body part (most often his thigh) — a cautionary tale to be heeded if there ever was one. Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand reported several "Superglue Revenge" variants in his 1984 collection of urban legends, "The Choking Doberman." A Hollywood version popular in the early 1990s claimed that actress Sean Young did it to then-boyfriend James Woods during an exceptionally tempestuous break-up. Ms. Young, who believes the story was maliciously promulgated by Woods himself, dismissed it as a lie in a 1993 Playboy interview.
In one of those disconcerting examples of life imitating legend, a 16-year-old girl in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania was charged with assault in July 2000 for gluing her cheating boyfriend's penis to his abdomen. The girl claimed she meant it as a joke, but the boyfriend wound up in the hospital and juvenile authorities were not amused.
Do not try this at home!
Updates:
Real-Life Superglue Antics Trump Urban Legends - Nov. 2005: Pittsburgh man sues former lover for "battery, assault, and intentional infliction of emotional distress" resulting from his buttocks being fused together and his private parts affixed to his abdomen with superglue — all because he broke up with the woman after 10 months of dating. Also: a very sticky toilet seat.
Superglue Revenge 2009 - Aug. 2009: News on a sticky situation in Wisconsin involving an unfaithful husband, his jilted wife, three women he cheated with, and a tube of Krazy Glue. Predictably, it didn't end well for the lothario.
