We were enjoying our billionth screening of Lost In Translation when I stuck my fork into a container of Drunken Udon noodles, hit a particularly succulent green bean and a two-out-of-three pepper rating shot directly into my right eyeball.
“Bwah!” I cried. “Bwah!”
“What?” Jurvis cried back. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Bwah!” I ran into our bathroom and stuck my head in the sink.
“Oh. Did some of that get into your eye or something?”
“Bwaaahh!” Gurgle gurgle. “Bwah!”
“Well,” I said a few minutes later, staggering into the living room, “it still feels like I have a spicy delicious optical nerve. But whatever, I’m sick of throwing water at my face. What’s the worst that could happen, right?”
“My uncle got pepper sauce into his eye and went blind,” Jurvis said.
We returned to the bathroom with a carton of milk, and in this fashion the meal was finished.
7 Comments
Can that actually happen?
Hmm, I’m not seeing any other report of it online, but this site does claim capsaicin can actually cause burns, and Wikipedia makes it sound like a freaking poison.
Also, none of these sources are suggesting flushing the eye with milk, which is what totally worked.
I found when I’ve had to flush my eye with water it feels like I’m drowning. You totally water boarded yourself with milk.
Oh — according to Jurvis I flush my eyes wrong. By “flush” I mean “I take two cupped hands full of liquid and throw it at my face while trying to keep my eyes open.” I like this method, it is full of whimsy and chance.
My grandfather maintained that he went blind in one eye because he left the juice of a chili pepper that squirted in his eye there all day while he was picking them in the field.
Consulting with my mother just now, we’re going to file this story in the tall tale bin.
Hopefully I’ll never have to flush your eye the proper way, but for google’s sake: lean the hysterical person over the tub with their head turned to the side so the affected eye is on top. Hold the eye lids open with clean fingers and pour milk into the corner of the eye so that it runs across the entire eye and out the other side and careens off their nose and into the tub. Rinse the face with water and repeat as needed.
I personally subscribe to Adrianne’s preferred method. It also has the added bonus of reminding me of the movie Airplane and thus keeping my mind off the searing pain of pepper-in-eye.