Well, things are pretty much wrapped up around here. Classes are done, assignments are handed in, local friends have been dined, other friends have been driven to the airport, travel arrangements have been made. One Literary Society meeting, one MPW Reading Series, and I’m outta here.
I finally tested out my pepper spray. I really should have done this earlier, I guess, but I didn’t for two reasons. 1) It’s hard to find a good place to test it. The vendor said I’d get in trouble if I shot it off on campus, but obviously I didn’t want to let loose with it in my apartment, and outside my apartment is a very busy neighborhood, and I feel self-conscious, like, “Oh, don’t mind me, I’m just testing out my pepper spray on your property here.” The other reason, 2), is that everyone I’ve talked to who actually shot it has managed to accidentally debilitate themselves or a close friend for a period of hours ranging from 4 to 24, and I’ve been too busy for that. But now that everything’s wrapped up and I had nothing really to do for a day or so, it seemed like the perfect opportunity to accidentally injure myself with pepper spray.
I went to an undisclosed location and shot it. At first I thought it was broken, but it turns out you just have to press the button down really, really hard. That’s a good detail to work out in a non-life-threatening context. Anyway, I pressed the button and a spurt of translucent brownish liquid that looked strikingly like salad dressing shot about three feet. As the spray quickly lost forward momentum, a lot of it trickled onto my fingers. I examined my fingers. They were stained orange, but I didn’t really feel or smell anything, except maybe a vague stench of rancid salsa. At first I was like, “You’ve gotta be kidding me. Who is this going to scare off?” I had always imagined that firing pepper spray would be like shooting someone with a really, really powerful can of Raid, not like squirting them with salad dressing. Then my fingers started to burn. Not bad enough that I couldn’t ignore it, but enough to make me think I should wash them off real soon, which I did, thoroughly, with soap and water, but they kept burning. It was never any worse than a mild sunburn, but it didn’t go away. After a while I got distracted and forgot about it, but when I got ready for bed eight hours later I noticed that my fingers were still burning, and I had trouble getting to sleep. And that was just a little bit that I washed off immediately. I really wouldn’t want to know what it feels like to get the whole thing in your face, let alone your eyes. I apologized to the pepper spray for doubting its puissance.
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