A holiday story of Polyurethane

I bought a spray can of Polyurethane to spray on rocks that kids painted in art club last week. I've never used such a product before. It comes in a can like spray paint, an aerosol can.

I read the back of the can and it says to remove the safety seal before spraying. I take off the lid and see there's a red dot on the nozzle area so I thought that was the safety thing. In trying to take that off, I sprayed myself: my sleeve and my hand and my fingers. Shit. Well, upon further inspection, the red dot is where the Polyurethane comes out and the safety seal was the plastic wrap on the can which I had to take off to even read the instructions. Go figure.

I sprayed the rocks and then went to the lady's room to wash my hands. I used hot water and soap and dried my hands. My hands were a little tacky and a little shiny but I didn't think anything about it.

When I got to my desk, I worked on my computer for about 20 minutes and when a student came in to hand me a book, I reached out to take it from him and... wait for it... the mouse stuck to my hand. And not just stuck and then plunk to the desk but STUCK to the point where I had to PEEL it from my hand and left sticky residue and skin on the MOUSE!! Holy shit, I polyurethaned the mouse to my HAND!!!!

That was not good.

I went to see our janitor and she gave me a bottle of chemical that we use to wash a dry erase board. So I sprayed it on my hand and it dried and my hand was no longer sticky or tacky BUT it burned like hell. I practically ran to the bathroom and washed my hands with water as hot as I could stand it and more soap. I washed and scrubbed.

When I was done, my hand was white. I mean, really white like notebook paper. Bloodless, all Edward Cullen like.

I put on hand lotion and pretty soon my flesh color came back but it was weird. I was also sans- polyurethane, and I remembered to clean my mouse, too.

Oh.... the rocks looked awesome.

Reason #243 why I shouldn't be allowed to do art projects,
Maggie