You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
A science experiment gone wrong.
Have you ever thought about what’s in your food? In your medicine? In the floor cleaner you buy?
Probably not.
You pull it off the shelf because it has a pretty label that promises to remove unicorn excrement. You buy it because it’s less expensive than the other product which promises the same rainbows and sunshine. You buy it because it’s priced to move, the product you saw on TV, the stuff your momma use to feed you.
But if you did pull the product off the shelf and spin it around 4 times, click your ruby slippers and then use your eagle eyes to zoom in to the product information label, you will see that everything is made from something.
Crazy premise, huh?
Chemical components like Sodium Bicarbonate. Sodium Hydroxide Hydrochloric Acid. The periodic table of life’s building blocks is well represented in the local grocery store.
Each product is loaded with chemicals, multi-syllabic words that are hard to pronounce, and harder to read. The ingredients make you think; Do I really want to consume that? Do I want to rub that on my face? How is that going to react with the microbiological demons that infest my small intestines?
So my sophomore son comes to me and says “Hey dad. I have a chemistry project .”
Normally, I’m like so, how in the wide world of sports does that affect me?”
“We have to go to the Publix.”
I look at him like a poodle whose chew toy is missing.
“Right? I have to find ingredients that include chemical elements in household products. I have to document the chemicals and take pictures of the products.”
That shouldn’t be too hard I think to myself.
We go to the super market and head for the vitamin aisle. Why? Vitamins are filled with stuff I think to myself.
I’m positive we will find iron in iron pills. I bet we find C in vitamin C, I say aloud.
My son casts me a stupid guy look. “C is not an ingredient, dad.”
And so it begins. Something that you would think is easy is not easy at all.
I immediately learn that manufacturers want you to read the big bold print on the front of the box that promises clean digestive health and better liver function.
Just because the ingredients are mandated to be on the product doesn’t mean the manufacturer has to make it legible. They certainly don’t have to make it understandable to most Americans who can barely conjugate a proper sentence.
So companies compose labels that are microscopic run on sentences like this: sodium nitrate ammonium hydroxide solution ferric oxide ascorbic acid sodium hydroxide.
That sounds scary doesn’t it?
That might just be a partial list of components in eye make up or Mr. Clean or Wonder Bread. Sadly, it might be components in all three.
The itty bitty font requires an electron microscope. The words are forged by a Lilliputian scribbled on a pin head. The recondite concepts are so small, so esoteric, my old eyes are screaming at me.
Hey old man. What are you doing? You’re hurting us, my eyes squeal.
Why are you rubbing sand paper on us? Why are you sticking forks in us? Quit reading. Look at something else.”
“Having trouble reading dad?”
My son chuckles.
I’m holding the box at arm’s length squinting like an Eskimo in a snow storm.
I toss him something that includes lead acetate sucrose dilute sulfuric acid.
“Where you going?,” he says. “We haven’t found one thing yet.”
I smile.
I walk to the pharmacy. I go to the reading glasses section. I begin trying on little glasses that say 2.5 magnification.
I walk out of the pharmacy and back to my son who has moved to the under arm products.
He laughs out loud. “You have a big price tag sticking off your head.
He’s right. I look like an old man dork.
I don’t care.
I pick up some men’s hair gel. Super hold. Sexyness guaranteed. I spin the bottle and look for the active ingredients.
aluminum chlorohydrate acetylsalicylic acid sodium hypochlorite
Thanks to my new dork glasses, the sub atomic writing becomes pronounced, legible. The words are foreign, like ancient Mayan or Sanscrit. But I look for words my son says his teacher has assigned him to find.
I read bottle after bottle after box.
It’s frustrating. It’s like reading a dictionary where words mean nothing, where there are no periods, commas or punctuation.
It’s a black hole of conceptual fatigue.
“Tell your teacher this is way harder than she thinks it is,” I say.
“Well, she’s a he and he knows that.”
“Well tell her she’s hideous.”
My son laughs knowing I’m lampooning the State Farm Insurance ad.
I found one he shouts.
Sodium bicarbonate.
Never in my life would I think that two words would bring me so much joy.
“Thank God.”
An entire periodic chart before us and we cannot find one chemical component in an entire super market.
It’s like staring at an ant hill with a billion ants oozing out of a hole in the Earth and finding one ant that looks like all the other ants.
My brain is aching like a sponge soaked with battery acid.
It’s full and burning and I want to tell my son we need to quit.
I keep my mouth shut.
We go to the automotive section hoping to find something with Hydrochloric acid.
It’s here that we find many cleaning supplies that list a few ingredients and then proclaim: 97% of the other components can be seen if you go to the web site.
3% are shown to the public on the box.
97% of the chemicals are hidden from plain view. Who in the world is going to go to www.deathchemicals.com and look up unpronounceable words?
The answer? NOBODY.
So we check box after box and we find nothing.
2 hours pass.
Shoppers come and go.
Store employees stare at us, wondering what we are doing.
After our 2nd hour categorizing chemicals, my son sits on the floor of the medicine aisle. He is reading aspirin boxes, and taking pictures of cold medicine.
We get 10 of 12 chemical components from cold medicine and make up and floor cleaners.
We also fail to find any products with hydrochloric acid. It’s reportedly in Lysol and drain cleaners, but when you look at those products, they fail to mention this.
Hmmmm?
I wonder if the public would think differently if they were cleansing with Hydrochloric Acid.
Who knows. Maybe HCL is good for your complexion.
We never do find HCL.
I now know much more about chemistry.
I know it hurts my eyes and brain and I like the pretty pictures on the box.
Life’s Crazy™