I'm afraid to talk back to Siri, the iPhone’s intelligent
personal assistant, for fear she’ll give my phone a virus. I play it safe,
follow the rules, never putting weird things like pineapple on my pizza.
So the other afternoon before going to work, I applied that
monthly flea and tick treatment to my pet beagle. I followed the rules
vigilantly, step by step, because, after all, that stuff’s intended to go into
the dog’s bloodstream and I didn’t need it accidentally going into mine. (If
you use a flea and tick treatment on your animal, don’t be alarmed when I write
that it goes into the bloodstream. It doesn’t. Only I didn’t know it at the
time.)
The cap exploded in my hand. Flea and tick treatment all
over my skin. Into my pores. Very little on the dog. And I knew for a fact it
had entered my bloodstream.
I panicked, dropped the tube of treatment on the ground and
reached for the package to read the first aid part. I stopped my dog before he
could lick any of the treatment off the garage floor.
Persons applying this
product must wear household latex gloves.
Now where was that step in the steps?
If on skin or
clothing: Take off contaminated clothing. (I interpreted that as a
direction to burn my clothes.) Wash skin
immediately with plenty of water for 20 minutes. (Twenty minutes!) Call poison control or doctor for treatment
advice. (Biohazard containment?)
Not knowing what else to do, I worried. I considered my
40-minute commute to work -- I had 41 minutes until I needed to be on the
clock. I worried more.
Five minutes of hand washing with plenty of hot water (the
faucet at full power) felt like two hours. Have you ever washed your hands for
five real minutes? My son turned 11
years old in less time.
My fingers tingled. I knew then the contagion was in my
veins and on its way to my heart.
“If this is a medical emergency, please hang up and dial
911.”
I thought about it, but an intense woman from Poison Control
answered and ordered me to give her my name, age, weight -- she practically
conducted a physical over the phone. Cough!
“Excuse me, not to interrupt,” I interrupted, “but I’m gonna
be six minutes late for work, which is actually a big deal, and I just need to
know if I’m blowing this thing out of proportion.”
“This is a very serious matter, sir,” the lady shot back.
“We haven’t seen this treatment on people, so we don’t know what to expect. You
know, you’re supposed to wear gloves when using this stuff.”
By the time I hung up the phone with No-Help-At-All, I was
on my way to being 15 minutes late to work and I’d only accomplished half of
the 20-minute hand washing I was supposed to be doing.
I got back to scrubbing my fingerprints clean off anyway. I
had my boss on speakerphone.
“Of all days, this is the worst day to be late,” he said.
“Twenty minutes tops,” I promised, even though I really
needed 40 to do the hand washing right.
“Ten.”
Ten minutes wasn’t going to work at all.
“Perfect,” I said. “See you then.” And I continued melting
my hands down to glue.
My son got home from school, wondered why I was still there.
I told him the story. He asked how long I’d been washing my hands. I told him
18 minutes straight. He said I wouldn’t be able to keep my promise to my boss
about only being 10 minutes late. So, after 19 minutes of washing my hands, I
stopped. My son feared that the skipped minute could be the difference between
life or death. He’s such a worrier.
Let’s see, death or
being late to work?
I’d just have to die later. I couldn’t waste another minute
washing -- I had to get to work.
While on the road, I called my wife and told her my hands
fell off in the car.
“Your hands didn’t fall off,” she said.
“Not yet, but they better before I get to work so I can have
a decent excuse for being so late.”
My hands never fell off. I showed up 51 minutes after my
shift began and my boss was fine with it. But my fingers were still tingling, so
at lunch I researched the treatment to see what might be going on. I discovered
that it doesn’t go into the bloodstream. It goes into the sweat glands.
Magically my fingers stopped tingling.
Even after rubbing shoulders with death, I’m still the same nervous
guy I was in the beginning. I’ve never had fleas or ticks before, but I’ll be
applying that treatment to my body again in a month’s time. Just to play it
safe.
-October 2014
WARNING: Please do not apply animal flea-and-tick treatment to your own human skin. The final statement of this story was the author's shameful attempt at humor.