Always Read The Label
So the girl goes into the bathroom to find some contact solution or rewetting drops because her eyes are getting dry... And she sees a bottle that is shaped like every other contact solution bottle she's ever seen... She doesn't recognize the company, though, but thinks "eh... whatever, it's just an off brand". But just to be safe, after reading the brand, she turns the bottle slightly in her hand and catches sight of the warnings... It says not to use it with a particular type of contacts because it could damage them... hmmm, well that's not what type of contacts she wears, so no problem there... it says to keep it out of reach of children... hmmm, well she's 25, so no problem there... That's it, really... mentioned something about some kind of tablet... whatever. Well, ok.
She opens it up, and notices that the little nozzle tip thingie is red. Well, isn't that cute, it's color coordinated with the bottle, which is white with blue and red. How cute. So she pops her contact out and wets it with the solution, rubs it gently, and proceeds to stick it back in her eye... until the fury of hell is unleashed behind her lid, that is. She then proceeds to collapse shrieking onto the floor, trying desperately to combat her eye's natural defense mechanism to lock up like a vault, prying uselessly at her clamped-up-like-a-military-installation eyelid... all the while the searing burning make-you-want-to-scratch-your-eyes-out-if-only-you-could-open-them pain is only getting worse... Finally, after agonizing moments rolling around on the bathroom floor, she finally regathers her wits enough to beg God piteously to please just let her get the evil thing OUT. He grants her request, and she peals the wicked, horrible beast off her eyeball.
Over the course of the next hour, she spends 43 minutes soaking, and rinsing, and splashing, and otherwise wetting with tapwaterher her burning, itching, painful, swollen eye; 14 minutes pouring Clear Eyes into it, and 2 minutes groping around and trying to reassure her son that dinner will indeed soon be ready.
It is now approximately 4 hours later, and the best way to describe the way her eyeball feels would be to say: the surface of the actual eye feels as though it is severely sunburned... and the inside of the eyelid feels like sandpaper.
There are some lessons in life that you'd think would be easy to learn. You'd think you would simply have to be told, and told only once. You'd think common sense would do the rest, or at least memory would take care of it. But sometimes in life, you're stupid. And you don't read the label.
And as a result, you soak your eye with freaking PEROXIDE. Who puts peroxide in a product for CONTACTS?? And then they decide to split the warnings and instructions up and place half on one side of the label, and the other half on the other side of the label... WHAT'S UP WITH THAT?? I assert that the person who made that decision is (or at least was at the time) posessed by a demon.
After I had recovered enough to be able to see clearly out of my unaffected eye, I went back into the fateful bathroom and scoured the label... it was then that I saw the other side... Which said that this product contains peroxide and to never get it anywhere near your eyeball, and to avoid your contacts like the plague for at least for hours upon immersion in this solution, and that that cute little red tip is red for a REASON, not just to be cute, and that reason is to remind you of the warning to never put it anywhere near your eyes!!
So really, I shouldn't say: Always Read The Label. Rather, I should say:
NEVER put anything to use until you have thoroughly scoured the label and the insert, and sought expert advice. Then and only then may you proceed--with EXTREME caution--to use whatever it is you thought you might want to use... and ONLY if you have a list of every major medical specialist nearby... On second thought, make a voice recording of that list and keep it nearby too, on the off-chance that you render yourself BLIND.
There. There's my advice for today.
-Jack-
