The OC

Saturday was the day.  OC Day.  That’s OC for Oleoresin Capsicum.  Pepper spray, to the layman.  We all knew it was coming, but we thought it wasn’t for another week.  A mere week’s difference may not seem like a big deal, but now that I’ve experienced it, I’m of the opinion it should be delayed as much as possible.  Like, forever.  That stuff sucks!  And burns.  Oh, does it burn.

We were fortunate though.  It was a breezy, overcast day.  We were told the best relief is a cool breeze and we had plenty of cool breezes.  That’s pretty much where the good news ended.

We were actually exposed twice.  The first time was with a fogger, something that might be deployed in a crowd control situation.  That one wasn’t too bad.  We were lined up in ranks, with helmets on, and they just kind of sprayed it into the air in our direction.  Depending on where you were standing and what the wind happened to be doing at the time, you may have gotten a lot, or escaped with just a little.  Don’t misunderstand, even a little is plenty, but relatively speaking, I didn’t get it too bad.  My nose and throat started to burn some and my eyes did start to tear up, but compared to some folks I got off pretty easy.  We were warned that once we put water on it, it can almost make it worse.  Yes, it rinses it off, but once you introduce water you have to have it.  Being the manly man that I am, I was able to deal with it without water.  Some of my classmates chose water and regretted it.  They were still recovering from round one when we stared round two.

After that first little bit, I was feeling pretty good.  Until I went to take out my contact lenses before the real deal.  I don’t know if I had some on my hands or there was still residue on my face or what, but as soon as I touched my contact lenses I started tearing up like there was no tomorrow.  Of course, this was right about the time our Director was giving the instructions for the OC to the face.  Instead of listening, I had my back turned so I could face into the wind.  Fortunately he didn’t notice.  After a couple minutes it passed.  If I though that was bad, I had another thing coming.

So it went like this:  you teamed up with a partner who would help lead you around after you got sprayed and make sure you didn’t trip and hurt yourself.  After your exposure you had to beat on a bag with the baton while giving commands until the training officers were satisfied, usually just 10 or 20 seconds, then you had to handcuff someone.  This doesn’t sound hard, but when you can’t see because your eyes are swollen shut and you feel like your skin is melting off your skull, it becomes a little trickier.  Only after completing those two tasks satisfactorily can you go decontaminate.  There were several hoses set up with bottles of baby shampoo to wash it out of your eyes and eyebrows as best you could, but like I said, the water only does any good when it’s actively sprayed on your face.  Once you’re off the hose, the burning just gets worse and the only thing that helps is cool, rapidly moving air.  We did have a couple of fans set up that I’m pretty sure dated back to the Carter administration and for all their noise and effort the air flow was about as strong as a one year old blowing out a birthday candle.  Not a lot of relief.

A fellow recruit said it was like getting hit in the face with a 2×4 when you have a really bad sunburn.  That’s close, but I think my description is more accurate.  It’s like dumping a bottle of the hottest hot sauce imaginable directly onto both eyeballs, then having someone punch you in the nose as hard as they can to get the eyes watering, the nose running, and to make breathing out of your nose impossible.  Then your face is set on fire and burns white-hot for about 20 to 30 minutes.  Finally the flames die down and you’re able to keep your eyes open for more than half a second, but your face continues to smolder for one to two hours more.  More than likely, even after you’re feeling pretty good in a few hours, when you take your shower all that residue left on your skin and in your ears and eyebrows runs back down your face and into your eyes again.  If you’re lucky, it stops there.  If not, well, use your imagination.  It is honestly the worst thing I’ve ever experienced.  I literally wanted to dig my fingers into my forehead and just peel my skin off and stick whatever was left into a vat of ice cream.  If it was just the stinging in the eyes, or just the burning skin, or just the not being able to breathe, I don’t think it would be so bad.  Even if it were two out of the three.  But all three are the perfect maelstrom of agony.  Everyone I talked to afterward was in agreement; that was much worse than we were expecting.

Initially for me, more than even the burning, it was the breathing that bothered me most.  I don’t think I was ready for that.  Once you’re sprayed, every ounce of mucus in your body goes directly to your nose, which is then somehow simultaneously completely clogged and oozing rivers of snot.  I was mentally prepared for the burning and the eye irritation, but I don’t think I was quite ready for that and it took a concerted mental effort not to get a little panicky.

All that being said and as miserable as I felt, I think I was one of the fortunate ones.  After even a couple of hours my skin was still a little burnie, but not unbearably so, and my eyes weren’t anymore irritated than if I had gotten some sand or something in them.  From some of the emails I got from fellow recruits, some were waking up with eyes swollen shut the next day or almost did the whole thing over again in the shower.  I must have managed to rinse a lot off with the hoses and baby shampoo and I was very methodical when I took my shower to make sure all the contaminated water went where it would do the least amount of damage.  I got a little reactivation, but nothing too bad at all.  Hopefully by now, everyone is back to normal.  All in all, I was proud of our class (the largest our Director had ever doused in one day), I thought we did great.

Am I glad I did it?  Yes.  Am I glad its over?  To quote Napoleon Dynamite, heck yes!  A small price to pay for the career that hopefully lies ahead.  Don’t want to do it again and if I ever start to misremember and think that is wasn’t so bad, I’ll just go and watch the video.  Oh, that’s right, I wanted to kill myself!  Now I remember.