Via an email, I learned about a fascinating incident in which a woman called 911 because a McDonalds restaurant had run out of Chicken McNuggets:

ARCH 3--Angered that her local McDonald's was out of Chicken McNuggets, a Florida woman called 911 three times to report the fast food "emergency." Latreasa Goodman, 27, last Saturday called police to complain that a cashier--citing a McDonald's all sales are final policy--would not give her a refund. When cops responded to the restaurant, Goodman told them, "This is an emergency. If I would have known they didn't have McNuggets, I wouldn't have given my money, and now she wants to give me a McDouble, but I don't want one." Goodman noted, "I called 911 because I couldn't get a refund, and I wanted my McNuggets," according to the below Fort Pierce Police Department report. That logic, however, did not keep cops from citing Goodman for misusing the 911 system. Even after being issued a misdemeanor citation, Goodman contended, "this is an emergency, my McNuggets are an emergency."

While this woman's conduct in calling 911 would seem indefensible by most people's standards, there are a lot of "emergencies" that aren't emergencies at all. Not only are hospital emergency rooms often used for routine health care (forcing those with emergencies to stand in line), but so are ambulances. Unharmed but litigious people will often demand ambulances when they are in ordinary fender-bender accidents, simply because they know it will make the case look better to an attorney. This reminds me of the time a friend was leaving a Philadelphia parking lot and a woman suddenly slammed herself against the front of his car and screamed that she'd been "hit." Through pure luck, a police officer witnessed the whole thing, and told the woman she was out of luck, but she remained adamant, and demanded an ambulance. (And believe it or not, that cop was required by department policy to call her an ambulance, simply because she demanded it. Fortunately for my friend, she never sued, probably because no lawyer was sleazy enough to take her case.)

The word "emergency" is almost as misused as the words "war" or "crisis." Things are so bad that as Mark Steyn observed recently, this country is living in a "permanent state of routine emergency."

Steyn isn't kidding. While so many different types of problems have been called emergencies that I couldn't list them all, here are a few selected, um, nuggets:

According to Barbra Streisand, we are in a global warming emergency.

Autism is a national emergency. (As I'm sure are countless diseases.)

The current state of US math education is a national emergency

The lack of awareness throughout America about the nature and impact of sleep disorders and sleep deprivation is a national emergency.

It is a National Emergency to have no domestic manufacturing of Vitamin C!

And this man makes a good argument that his student loan is a national emergency and demands a federal bailout.

And if it isn't an emergency, I think it's only fair that we at least call it a crisis.

After all, we wouldn't want to damage anyone's self esteem.