My First Experience with Pepper Spray

A few years ago while undergoing police training, I was introduced to pepper spray. As a requirement of graduation, myself (along with my entire class of hopeful crime fighters) were required to submit to being pepper sprayed…………………in the face…………………..with pepper spray.


For those of you not familiar with pepper spray, let me give you a little information about it.

The use of pepper as a weapon goes all the way back to ancient China. The Chinese would grind red chili pepper and put it on rice paper as a weapon and then swing it to the face of their opponents.


Modern manufactures actually bore a hole straight into the very pit of Hades itself and extract actual eternal hell fire and put it in a little can. You can then squirt this “little can of happiness” into the face of any not-so-nice person (or wild animal) and reduce even the burliest, meanest, loudest, most aggressive, knuckle dragging gorilla of a man, into nothing more than a quivering, whimpering little pile of gerbil poo that wants nothing more than to be held by his mother while he sobs into his blanket and calmly sucks his thumb.


We were taken outside and aligned with a partner. The role of the partner was to hold your arm after you had been sprayed and lead you the water hose to decontaminate after having your face eaten off by the spray.

I was paired up with one of the toughest dudes in the class.  He was an ex-boxer, an accomplished athlete and an aspiring mixed martial arts fighter.  I figured that if anybody in this whole class could stand up to a tiny little squirt of “canned satan”, it would be him.

The instructor asked him if he was ready, to which he replied with a manly “yup”, and then proceeded to spell out the word “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” upon his face with the pepper spray. 

I thought to myself, “holy crap” as I watched this young man begin to attempt to slap his face off. He was twirling around like a cracked-out ballet dancer with a hot burning coal dropped into her panties.

It was when he began to take in the deep breath needed to facilitate the loud girly scream he was preparing to let loose, that I noticed the huge cloud of pepper spray enveloping his head.

Before I could say, “don’t do that”… he did it. He took in so much air (and spray) that he sounded like a wounded hoover vacuum cleaner with a leaky bag.

He immediately realized his mistake, and proceeded to cough, slobber and drool all over everything within 32 feet.

I finally managed to wrangle him, like a bucking brahma bull over to the water hose.

As I began to pour the water over his eyes to remove the spray, he grabbed the hose from me and began making out with it right in front of everybody.

While helping him I watched several other classmates undergo pretty much the same thing with the same effect. It was at this point that I began to question my chosen career path and considered nursing or goat milking as suitable alternative.

 
Then…
 
it was…
 
my turn…
 
I walked over to the “spray zone” with a plan.

I had seen so many of the others hold their eyes open and breath that I decided to do neither. I was going to stand there with both eyes tightly closed and hold my breath until I had been hosed down thoroughly at the water spigot.

The instructor asked me if I was ready, to which I replied, “Nope”.

Obviously he didn’t hear me because he squirted me on my forehead anyway. I managed not to get it in my eyes, but did feel the heat.

I became concerned only when I felt my right eyebrow slide down my face and land on my foot.

I was led (drug) to the water hose by my buddies and doused with a healthy amount of cool water which alleviated the burning somewhat.

I was DONE!! I HAD BEATEN THE SPRAY!!! It really wasn’t as bad as I had feared and I assumed that the tingling would subside with time.

 
The scene looked like a triage on a battlefield. People were lying in the grass everywhere just moaning and whimpering.

I saw 2 people in the fetal position licking the grass and another crawling on his hands and knees while dragging his face across the asphalt.

After a time it seemed that the pain was subsiding and everyone started calming down a bit.

After observing us for over an hour (to make sure we didn’t die) the instructors sent us home.

Before letting us go, they cautioned us about lingering effects and we were warned that the pepper spray was most likely in our hair. They informed us that when we got in the shower, the water could reactivate it and we would have the pleasure of reliving our wonderful experience.


I had a plan for that as well...


When I got home, I stripped down to my birthday suit and jumped in the pool. I figured that I would swim around for an hour or so to allow enough time for the pepper spray that was matted in my hair to break loose and dissipate. That way, (or so I thought) when I get in the shower, all of it would be gone. (um hum)
 

After an hour or so, I climbed my naked butt out of the pool, (causing untold future psychiatric problems for the neighbors that had the misfortune of witnessing it) and got in the shower.


The warm water cascaded down through my hair, and sure enough found a vast pocket of dried pepper spray and said to it, “get up, it’s time to go to work”.


I felt my head start to burn like an uncontrolled forest fire started by 12 drunken hillbilly inbred relatives named Bubba, and then my ears actually burst into flames and proceeded to char the shower curtains.

I then commenced to reenact the scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds” where the girl was swarmed with a million pissed off crows trying desperately to pluck her eyes out, and started flailing my arms around while singing “I Like to Move it Move it” in my best Jamaican voice.


Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse…


IT DID…
 

Now I don’t know how gravity works at your house, but at mine it makes stuff flow south.

HOLY LIVING CRAP A-MIGHTY!!!!
 
The pepper spray traveled down my body like molten lava from an erupting volcano and washed over my unsuspecting crotch in a tsunami of pain the likes of which I had never had the misfortune of being subjected to.

I audibly heard Nat King Cole singing, “Chestnuts roasting on an open fire” as I passed out.

When I came to, I was dragging my butt across the carpet and screaming like a wounded bob cat.

My dog bubba just looked at me.

It felt like “Tattoo” from” Fantasy Island” was running directly under my nether regions while holding a flaming tiki torch!


I then ran my naked butt through the house and tried (unsuccessfully) to back my tail up and into the deep freezer.

That didn’t work and no matter how hard I tried, I could not sit down deep enough on the toilet to put the flames out.

No matter how far or fast I ran, I couldn’t stop the burning!!


I then ran screaming naked through the house, and burst out into the back yard in a wide-eyed sprint directly towards the pool.

I waved at my neighbors as I lunged towered the diving board. I executed a perfect triple backflip followed by an inverted left twist and finished with a forward facing butt-down cannon ball.

I then proceeded to swim laps at a speed that would have made Michael Phelps jealous.


After 3 hours of swimming followed by an ice pack, and a round of Tylenol I finally made it to my bed where I curled up with my blanket and stuck my thumb in my mouth.

Josh Bridges
Forest City NC

Courtesy of  Cop Humor