There are few things in life more obnoxious then the feeling of wandering eyes peering over your shoulder to see what you’re reading or watching. I don’t care if you’re reading the bland New York Times Op-Ed piece about plastic versus wooden toothpicks in a Starbucks or watching “Project X” on your laptop in the middle seat of a cross country flight, inquisitive peripherals glances will happen and you will be judged.

For some reason these innocent glaces feel like an uninvited peek into our souls rather than an innocent invasion of privacy. We’re all guilty of judging someone because of what book they’re reading on the subway, the music they’re blasting far too loud from their headphones or the pictures they’re browsing on Facebook. But that doesn’t stop us from wanting chastise and sucker punch anyone who snoops and snickers over our shoulder.

It’s completely normal to want to keep our seemingly private interests and idiosyncrasies to ourselves while in the presence of strangers, but around friends, family and the ones we love it really shouldn’t matter. I mean who really cares if your friends notice you’re listening to Huey Lewis and the News or your girlfriend catches you watching “Pretty Little Liars,” right?

Doyle Hardwick from Pasco County, Florida is just another guy who hates someone looking over his shoulder. Except substitute the curious eyes of a stranger with that of his wife, a newspaper article with his Facebook account and a subway car with the privacy of one’s bedroom.

The trouble began brewing the evening of Sept. 24, as Hardwick plied his wife with beer, hoping she would go to bed. She drank. And drank. But didn’t feel like going to sleep. So he called 911.

Caller (CLR) “says him and his wife are sitting next to each other,” the 911 transcript reads. “CLR is upset because she won’t go to bed. Now they are bickering about who has been drinking. CLR has had 4 beers. Wife has had 8 beers. … CLR is upset because she wouldn’t let him look at Facebook peacefully.”

His wife, Julie Hardwick, 54, waited for the deputy outside the mobile home at 27022 Dayflower Blvd. in the Angus Valley area of Wesley Chapel.

“Come in,” she said to the deputy, a Pasco County Sheriff’s Office report states. “He’s in here.”

Doyle Hardwick, 57, was still on the phone with 911 when the deputy walked in. The house was in order and the Hardwicks were calm. Both smelled of alcohol, the report says. The deputy asked the husband to step outside and talk with him.

Doyle Hardwick said he “called 911 because he was upset about his wife sitting next to him and not going to sleep after he gave her beers to go to sleep,” the deputy wrote. “His wife was supposed to go to sleep after he gave her the beers because that was their agreement. He wanted me to make his wife not sit next to him and go to bed like she was supposed to.”

“I just wanted someone to make my wife do what I wanted her to do,” Hardwick told the deputy.

Doyle Hardwick basically drugged his wife in order to creep on Facebook. When the booze didn’t work he decided the logical next step was to dial 911 and complain that his wife won’t fall asleep so he can creep on Facebook. And to make matters worse this isn’t the first time he has apparently misused 911. In 2010 he called “regarding neighbors defecating into old vehicle fuel tanks.”

Now Doyle has 60 days in jail to get adjusted to not-so-innocent invasions of privacy, and to learn that women will go to sleep when they damn well please.

[Tampa Bay Times]
[Image via Shutterstock]