…Or, why Murphy’s Law also applies to your peepers, people.
The Project: Cutting out old gas lines in the Curbly House, to make way for new electrical wiring and structural reinforcements (yes, these old houses were lit gas lamps!).
The Story: It was late in the day, almost time to wrap things up, but there was one lingering steel pipe up in the ceiling that I wanted to cut out. “Five minutes,” I thought, then I’ll go home. So I pulled out my awesome reciprocating saw, put a metal blade on it, and went to work.
After a minute of holding the saw up over my head, my safety goggles (which hadn’t left my face all day) we’re getting kind of foggy, and the dim late-afternoon light made it hard to see). So, I took them off. “Just for a minute,” I thought.
The Moment Of Truth: Of course, ten seconds after I removed my eye-protection … BAM! A tiny sliver of metal went flying into my left eyeball. Having anything stuck in your eyes hurts, but galvanized steel is particularly grating.
You what’s smart? Wearing safety goggles. You know what’s smarter? Not taking them off!
The Lessons Learned:
– Wearing safety glasses or eye goggles is useless if you take them off … ever. It might seem like ‘just a few seconds’, but those are the exact seconds during which a metallic particle will come flying ‘atcha.
– Careful when looking up. On this (and many other projects) I realized (duh) that anytime you’re looking up at your working surface, you have to be extra careful. Thanks for nothin’, gravity.
Aaaaaaand just for fun, I thought I’d throw in this:
Sigh. Remember when The Simpsons was funny?