GOT MACE?

Remember Mace? Well, I guess it's still around, but it was the '60s when it came to prominence and when everybody knew of it. It was sort of the first pepper spray stuff, at least the first I ever knew of. Cops would use it at riots or with a troublesome arrest or whenever they felt like it.

Who here has been Maced? Raise your hands.

I was Maced. By a cop. Yeah, one of those heartless, brutal pigs sprayed me with the stuff. And what did I do to deserve this? Hey, man, I was just sitting there livin’ a free life, chillin’, trackin’ my own groove, man, doing nothing, causing no harm. My mistake, my single terrible mistake, was asking one simple, inoffensive question. That’s all, I swear.

And who was this cop? Well…it was my father.

My parents were divorced and Dad had moved out when I was nine years old. But in later years, when I was older, if he was patrolling in a cop car without a partner, he would frequently stop in front of our house and honk the horn. I would then be expected to go sit in the car with him and help him to pass the time. I guess that was the intent. I didn’t look forward to these visits because I really had very little to say to my dad.

This occasion, I’m going to guess I was about 16, maybe a year or so either way. I sat in the passenger seat of the police car, Dad behind the wheel. I saw his can of Mace in a cup-holder sort of thing between the seats. I’d certainly heard of Mace, but I could never quite figure how a simple spray could really bother folks that much. What? Did it smell bad? Did it irritate the eyes? I didn’t get it. I couldn’t quite believe it.

So I asked Dad that simple, innocent question. I pointed at the Mace and asked, “does that stuff really work?”  Dad said, “hold out your hand.”  So I held my left hand toward him, palm up. He pulled the Mace can from its holder and spritzed one quick, tiny puff into the palm of my hand. I didn’t sense anything, so I leaned in for a little sniff. Still nothing. I was just about to say, “I don’t smell a thing” when my head exploded. 

It felt as if the entire inside of my head and a sizable portion of my face were melting. The contents of my skull were on fire. Every liquid in my head (including those solids which had just melted) started pouring out of every available orifice. Well, not my blood. Thankfully, that stayed inside, where it merely boiled. 

I couldn’t speak, could barely breathe. Somehow I managed to get out of the car and stumble into our house. I could barely crack an eye open to see where I was going, but eventually I found the bathroom, turned on the water, ran it over my poisonous left hand and started flinging water into my eyes, over and over. At first it had no effect at all and I feared that this agony would last the rest of my (hopefully) very short life. 

I don’t know how long I stood there snuffling, snorting, leaking, and crying, throwing water at myself. It felt like a long time. It felt as if I’d started in early autumn, moved through the holidays and into the new year. Somewhere around spring, I began to feel some relief. In earth time, I expect it was 5-10 minutes. Forever, in other words.

Finally, the pain was gone. I looked at myself in the mirror and it wasn’t pretty. My eyeballs were as red as the center of a properly cooked steak and the skin around my eyes, nose, and mouth was maybe one shade more toward medium rare.

I plodded back outside where Dad was still sitting in the cop car. He had a huge smile on his face. I got into the car. He was pointedly not looking directly at me and he was stifling a laugh. I said, “yeah, it works.” And then he did laugh. 

Dad…what a card!