A Tingling, Burning, Skin-Eating Sensation

September 18th, 2003 Posted in 2003

Hardly slept at all last night—a collection of bad nightmares and fitful sleep, for some reason. So it took me forever to wake up this morning, stumbling around plugging the kettle in, putting a toothbrush in my mouth, walking into the shower rod, circumventing the rod and making it into the shower itself.

During the course of my morning routine, I plugged the iron in, came back a bit later and thought, “Wow, the iron’s plugged in. Did I leave that on last night? That’s dangerous.” So I unplugged it, then came back five minutes later: “Didn’t I plug that in? Damn it, I need to press my pants.” Plug in again. Five minutes later: “Egads, someone left the iron on!” ecetera.

It still hadn’t occurred to me how insanely tired and half-asleep I still was, though, until I went to shave. I got the hot water going in the faucet, tried to focus on the mirror with bleary, half-shut eyes, grabbed the shaving cream off the mantle and shook some out into my hand, then started lathering it under the water. I looked over at the mantle. There was the shaving cream, still unopened, way over at the far end. Closer to me was a tin of Comet toilet cleaner. My fatigued brain struggled to create the sparks to put this together, and maybe come up with a reason why my hands were starting to burn.

“Waiiiiiit a minute,” I thought. “You don’t shake out shaving cream as a powder. You spray shaving cream. What the hell am I lathering?”

Well, obviously, the Comet toilet cleaner. “Ow!” I yelled, grabbing the soap and trying to get the toxic skin-eating chemicals off my hands. “Jesus, that hurts! And who the fuck plugged the iron in?”

A strong argument, I think, that the work day shouldn’t officially start until noon. Either that or that I should be declared mentally retarded by the federal court, and given round the-clock supervision until well after 10am, so that I don’t accidentally bring harm to myself or others.