Safety First

It was a bit of a grey, drizzly day as I carefully carried my Macchiato to the shop.  Playing with machines that made screeching noises and reduced wood to dust always uplifted my spirits.  I moved over to the drill press and fiddled with the chuck key to change bits.  I was working on a teak jewelry box that I had picked up at a garage sale.  As I reached across for a 3/8 th’s twist bit, the edge of my cuff caught my beloved Macchiato and spun it off the bench into a double bounce on the floor.  Macchiato literally means stained in Italian.  The floor, the side of my bench and my fourteen-year-old jeans were now macchiati.  I uttered the requisite profanities and moved on.  Clean-up could be deferred to later.  This was, after all, a workshop.

As I hit the start button, a quick flash of a faint memory materialized in my head.  Safety!   I had promised that I would be responsible in my playing with tools so I clicked off the machine and looked for my new safety glasses.  I made sure to step in the Macchiato as I went to grab them off the rack across the room.  They were securely contained in an inner package of clear tamper proof plastic, the same material that is used in the re-entry shield of the space shuttle.   The outside packaging was of light cardboard and bore two paragraphs of safety instructions:  blah, blah, blah … put on head over eyes … blah, blah, blah … if taken internally do NOT induce vomiting … and in French:  le blah, le blah, le blah …  I collected all the tools I would need to open the package.  There were five:  Staple remover, disposable knife, dry wall knife, wood chisel and acetylene torch  (just in case).

I got through the cardboard ok but hit a wall when I got to the space-age plastic.  The first attempt snapped the blade off the disposable knife and I pitched it into the waste bin.  Well not quite.  It hit the side of the waste bin then landed in the Macchiato in one of the creamier blobs next to my foot.   I almost gave up with the chisel as well until I realized the torch was out of fuel.  I took out a hammer to tap the chisel through the plastic.  It wasn’t cutting but it was cracking a little so I felt encouraged. One final, more assertive smack and I was through, except that a tiny piece of the polyethylteflohydro-C3PO plastic flew into my left eye. 

I made my way through the last recognizable blob of cream on the floor to the small washroom across the room.   I looked in the mirror but couldn’t see anything.  My eye was starting to water quite severely and I was beginning to get a little agitated.   I grabbed my eyelid and tried to pull it over the bottom of my eye to try to dislodge the offending material.  All that came out were a few eyelashes and a lot of tears.  My eye was starting to get very red.  I tried again, but only got more eyelashes and more tears.  I needed to go the hospital to get the thing flushed.

Driving with one hand holding a tissue over one eye probably wasn’t the best idea I had ever had, especially when it came to changing gears, but it was the best I could come up with since I was in a hurry to get back to playing in my shop.  All was progressing relatively smoothly – I had only swerved onto the shoulder twice – until I rounded a corner where the traffic morphed into a low moving blob.  Construction.  There was a sea of pink cones surrounding a backhoe operator that was wiping mustard stains from his hot dog off one of the hydraulic levers in his rig.  Six other city employees, wearing hard hats, were supervising this operation. A seventh was ‘directing’ traffic.  From what I could tell, safety was very important to him as well. 

He wore a hard hat, of course, presumably in case any space debris were to fall on his head.  It was covered in large X’s of reflective tape for maximum visibility.  He had on safety glasses, a heavy duty jacket, a reflective safety west, leather gloves, cargo pants with built in shin pads.  Every item was of a distinctly unique, very bright color.  He had on an ergonomic back support presumably so he would not be injured by the weight of his utility belt, which consisted of a flashlight, air horn, flares, radio and a water bottle.  I couldn’t really tell but I’m sure the guy must have been wearing a condom as well.  All he was missing was a parachute.  I was quite surprised by that.  The significant problem here, however was the manner in which he was holding his sign, which was neither clearly STOP or SLOW, but moving back and forth giving some in-between message.  Traffic had accordingly stopped and slowed and slowed and stopped and stopped.  If he were working in the US he would have needed a bullet-proof vest as part of his construction site fashion statement.

I pull into the hospital parking lot and park in the furthermost spot from the pay station.  I walk to the pay station.  I walk back to my car to see what stall I am in.  I walk back to the pay station to record my stall number.  I walk back to my car get change for the machine.  I am breathing hard now and my eye is really starting to hurt.  I finally make it into the building.  There is a large room full of very unhappy people.  Some are bleeding, some are moaning and others are parting with other unwanted fluids.  I’m not sure whether I am in an emergency ward or in a casting studio for a Quentin Tarantino film.  I move to the font desk and am asked what the nature of my ailment is.  I am holding tissue paper over my eye.  I now think I am in an emergency ward.  I tell her I have hurt my eye.  She asks me which one.  I now breathe a sigh of relief because now I know I’m in an emergency ward.  She hands me a form full of medical questions to answer. I move to a seat and try to remember if I’ve ever miscarried or contracted any hematode borne diseases in any African country.

As I sit and rummage through my pocket for a pen, I hear the sound of someone very sick.  It begins as a moan, then escalates to a wet gagged cough that culminates into a full, Olympic-sized upchuck.  I turn and see that the man is about ten meters behind me in the corner.  The smell of bile and partially digested food hits me about two seconds later.  In a purely Newtonian moment, created by a simple calculation, I determine that the velocity of the smell of vomit is 5 meters per second.  I’m sure no one has ever discovered that before.  Once I’m out of here I need to call David Suzuki!

My phone rings.  It’s not David Suzuki.  The room becomes suddenly quiet and all the eyes from the entire cast of ‘Planet Terror’ are staring at me.  The delightful woman at the triage counter clears her throat and points to the “no cell phones” sign on the wall with all eyes shift to her. 

“I’m at the hospital,” I say into the mic.

“What?” she shrieks, for all to here, because I have, inadvertently,  hit the speakerphone option on my cell.

All eyes are on me now, even the guy with the very empty stomach.  He was lying on his back before but now he’s propped himself up to see what was going on.

“I hurt my eye opening the packaging of the safety goggles.”

A man with his hand stuck in a jar of pickled eggs is laughing at me.

My number comes up and I am ushered into the ‘Eye Room’.  A very affable young doctor comes in and places my head in a device that was likely designed in a dungeon in medieval France during the times of Sade.  My head is very immobilized.  The MD shines a little light into the correct eye without asking me which one is hurt.  I am impressed.  He gives it a cursory examination and tells me that there is a little piece of plastic embedded in my sclera.  He squirts in a very drops of anesthetic then comes at me with a scalpel blade.  “Don’t’ blink,” he says.  That would have been like putting a live earthworm in my mouth and saying, “Don’t spit!”.   My eye is blinking faster that it’s ever blinked.  I am creating a draft in the room. 

More anesthetic follows in an attempt to abate my blinking instinct.  It works but now my nose is numb and I’m starting to drool.  The doctor gets closer.  In fact he is very, very close peering into my eye and poking with a sharp thing.  I can see blackheads on his nose and smell his breath.  I don’t think I have ever been this close to another adult male in my entire life.  I try to pull away but can’t as my mouth gets drier and my testicles begin to ascend into my abdomen.

“All done,” he says.  Balls drop down to normal position.

On the drive to the hospital I made a mental not to come take the route with the construction site.  That note got lost somewhere between the speed of smell and the non-blinking challenge.  Back at the traffic snarl, the mustard mishap has been fixed because the backhoe operator is sitting on the front arm of his rig having a smoke.  He only needs five supervisors for this.  The sixth is making scraping noised with a shovel.  Mr. STOP/SLOW has been replaced by a young female with slightly less safety equipment but much better color co-ordination. 

I’m back in the shop and I’ve only lost two hours.  I must get back to my project but first a quick trip to the loo.  I come out and go back in with the safety goggles.  Safety first.