You Have Been Warned

I may offend a few readers in this post, but I have always been of the mind that everyone needs to agree to disagree if there is some point they cannot come to an understanding about before something becomes contentious. I have said for decades that ‘opinions are like belly buttons – everyone has one.’ With the exception of the answer to one of my favorite riddles:

An archeologist finds 2 perfectly preserved bodies. He shouts, “I HAVE FOUND ADAM & EVE!” How did he know? Because they did not have bellybuttons!!

Adam & Eve are myths you say – that joke is irrelevant because they did not exist. Ok, I disagree, but feel free to believe what you want. That is just the way I am. But personally, in the end (i.e. Death), I am not willing to take the chance that their maker does not exist.

Anyway, back to opinions.

When my sister & I were young we played with Jarts with shiny-metal-pointy ends, Creepy Crawlers with a ‘cooker’ that got as hot as an oven it seemed, an Easy Bake Oven that cooked cookies and cakes via a 60 watt lightbulb in an dual open ended oven you could just about stick your tiny hand completely in, cap guns, fireworks, we ran with scissors, threatened each other with REAL knives (well, maybe that was just me), played with rockets that really flew at a rapid speed up into the air, you name it, the toys were out there. No warning with the exception of ‘have fun’ from the manufacturer – because people took responsibility for their own stupidity.

We had REAL toys that did REAL things that could REALLY hurt you – if you were stupid enough to do something dumb – twice. You usually learned the first time never to do that thing again – without being forewarned by big brother.

Now EVERYTHING is about safety. ‘Mustn’t hurt the baby’ is the mantra for today’s parent. Nothing too hot, nothing too cold, nothing electrical, nothing sharp, nothing except electronic toys that are ‘educational’ but do not teach the child about the real world. We are raising a generation of kids that will be geniuses in IQ, but idiots in real life.

This leads me to ‘warnings.’ I think companies have gone bonkers with their warnings – but only because people have gone crazy suing the pants off them if they do something stupid and hurt themselves with the product and then the jury awards them a gosh awful sum of money for doing that stupid thing because each jurist wants to have it in writing in the event that they do the exact same stupid thing and get hurt and they want to make darn sure that there is a precedence set already so that they will get a butt load of cash too. Not sure how much a ‘butt load’ of cash is – but in my case – using my butt as a guide – it is a lot.

Case in point:

For Mother’s Day my wonderful children got me a ‘magic curling machine’. I saw a commercial while I was out sick and just had to have one.

This morning I was using my ‘magic curling machine’ and in the mirror I noticed the warning dangling from the cord. One of many warnings. I had to look again at the one in the reflection to make sure I wasn’t seeing things – “CAUTION – THIS PRODUCT CAN BURN EYES.”

What the heck? I have become almost immune to the one that warns you not to use some electrical item in your bathtub – as if – but this warning was altogether something new.

It can burn your eyes?  Upon closer inspection I noticed that it had a picture of a regular curling iron on the warning picture – so in that respect I guess it kind of makes sense – although I have never I my life thought of using my curling iron to curl my eyelashes or my eye (can you curl an eye?) – but the warning label means that some idiot out there has tried……

This is becoming scary to you rational people now isn’t it?!

But let us take a closer look at the item attached to this warning:

You.Have.Got.To.Be.Kidding.Me.

What kind of moron would try to use this big of a hot machine so close to their eye that it could burn it? This machine is big enough to take up half your face! To top it off, the heating element is inside the big housing! How the hell would you even get the heat close to your eye?

But that warning label means that some idiot out there has burned their eye….and actually alerted the company to their stupidity (as in the purchasers stupidity, not the company’s) – and possibly even sued them.

OH WAIT, I am being too rational. I just figured it out. Some consumer out there purchased this product, was using it and their arm got soooo tired that while curling a section of their hair they rested the behemoth on their face. BAM! Burned eye.

Forgive me, I get it now. Sorry, for this post. It was right in front of me the whole time and I didn’t see it. I just didn’t understand - maybe there should have been a warning sign posted…