I wore my Emergency Clothes today.
I never seem to need them for emergencies, though they are intended for just that.
I first thought about keeping a set of Emergency Clothes in lab, whatever type of lab I worked in, during college. In an organic chemistry lab session, a friend of mine had to have a sleeve of a sweater she was wearing cut off, to prevent the corrosive chemical she'd spilled on that sleeve from eating its way through the sweater and coming into contact with her skin. It was the last lab before Christmas break - cold and dark, and it had snowed that morning. Organic chemistry lab session often ran over time, stretching well into the evening... a rite-of-passage for would-be biologists. She trekked across campus in the soft snow that evening, bundled in a coat, had, muffler, gloves, and a one-sleeved sweater. The lab proctor, sympathetic, warned, "That's why so many of you will keep an extra set of clothes in whatever labs or hospitals you end up working in. You never know what might happen..."
If I'm not mistaken, most government and institutional regulations mandate that labs and medical facilities provide their workers with a variety of equipment to help them remove harmful or potentially harmful chemicals and biological materials, in case of accidental exposure. Depending on the level of hazard involved, the "decontamination" equipment can, I suppose, approach (but not reach) a Hollywood-level of sophistication (think Outbreak). I can only guess because, as I've never worked with such potential high-level hazards, I've never been in a facility with such emergency equipment.
At heart, I'm really a soft, submissive creature. My history as a (hack) biologist shows it: HIV, ebola, and other such joys were never on my "to do" list. A tour in my research history is a journey of gentleness: colorful non-pathogenic bacteria spread on soft agar petri plates, swift-swimming protozoa so fragile that they barely survive in pure water, round and reliable budding yeast, simple and straightfoward mammalian tissue culture, and finally tiny fish that serve as a good source of calcium in some Japanese prefectures. Even my experience with radioactivity has been relatively mild, limited only to a phosphorus isotope with a short half-life.
In all cases, the labs I've worked in have all provided the same "decontamination" safeguards: a generously-stocked first aid kit, an eyewash station, and a safety shower. From what I can tell, these are the bare minimums... for those of us working with the lowest-risk materials. The eyewash station and first aid kit would usually be affixed into the wall, the former resembling a sideways sink missing its basin. But, the real star of the show is always the safety shower: for use in the case of whole-body contamination with some nasty substance. Jutting unceremoniously from the ceiling, a wide, crude, metallic showerhead with accompanying handle advertized its purpose: if burning, corroding, dying (or other equivalent condition) due to exposure to high levels of harsh chemical/pathogen, simply stand under the showerhead and pull the handle. Only the simple drain placed just below the showerhead provided a final clue of its purpose. I've never seen anyone use a safety shower before, save for the 1970s-era chemical safety videos they'd show us in college during the first chemistry lab each year... some slightly asocially-awkward post-teen, gangly and pimple-faced, would feign pain due to some off-camera disaster, pull the handle, and step beneath the deluge, unabashedly stripping off his clothes in the process. Yes, the only rule for safety shower fun is this - you get naked. In front of your classmates, labmates, boss... simply because if you're using the safety shower, your life likely depends on it.
Here's where the theory of Emergency Clothing comes in handy. Once the shower deed is done (or, in the case of my peer in college, once the sleeve is cut off, narrowly averting the shower deed), what to wear? In the former case, your clothes (or what few of them survived the chemical or biological hazard exposure) are in a sopping, sad pile next to you on the floor. In the latter, you at least need a replacement sweater or sweatshirt, since looking so counterbalanced as to lack a right sleeve is, in my book, simply out of the question. A set of Emergency Clothes would provide the truly bashful (including yours truly) with adequate covering. But, there's an alternative... the Paper Suit.
The name speaks for itself. It's literally a thin, pulp-processed garment. I first heard about it while attending my first lab safety class when I wanted to work as a lab assitant in college. Each lab had a paper suit, usually folded into a compact ball and stuffed in the aforementioned first aid kit. In the absence of Emergency Clothing, the Paper Suit becomes the only barrier between your birthday suit and the rest of existence. Actually, "barrier" might be a term too generous for this covering. Since the safety shower doesn't come with plush towels, the suit would, in theory, be put on over wet skin and, since it is a Paper Suit, would become transparent and slowly degrade. In such cases of catastrophic exposure, I'm sure I wouldn't care too much that my friends and co-workers saw my flabby torso and pale skin: I'd most likely focus on the approaching paramedics, and silently pray that they'd be blind lesbians. But, in any case where the safety shower eliminated the threat. the Paper Suit would be a humbling experience, to say the least.
Following my peer's de-sleeving incident in college, I entered the lab I worked in at the time and unfolded the Paper Suit. Following that brief glimpse, I could only conclude that the true purpose of the Paper Suit was simply a tool of ridicule. Like the act of being picked last to be on a team in gym class, the Paper Suit was meant to promote shame for anyone unfortunate enough to require the use of the safety shower (and disrobing involved), yet not require an immediate trip to the nearest hospital (and the relatively generous covering of a hospital gown). In those cases, after all, the plateau of urgentless time in between the panic of the showering process and the later visit to a doctor's office or charitable taxi ride home would be spent, wet and cold, in a white, dissolving Paper Suit. Some might say it's a small price to pay for spilling a jug of glacial acetic acid on oneself, but, standing there holding the "one-size-fits-all" whole-body Paper Suit (which, even with my short legs, would've barely qualified as capri pants) to see the Paper Suit as a public shaming... for foolishly attempting to lift a jug of glacial acetic acid in the first place.
At that moment, there in college, as I attempted the complext origami folds necessary to pack the Paper Suit back into the cuboidal form necessary to fit back into the first aid kit, I resolved never to wear that Paper Suit. I was going to either keep a set of Emergency Clothes in lab, or make sure I'd never do anything damn foolish enough to necessitate public stripping beneath the safety shower. While the former precaution (Emergency Clothing) seemed most prudent, this Paper Suit revelation unfortunately fell at the beginning of the period in college where I drank the most, leading to frequent lapses in memory and judgment. Thus, the Emergency Clothing idea, apparently sequestered to a population of brain cells tragically lost, Titanic-like, in such youthful indiscretions, was quickly forgotten.
Years later, following graduation, I moved to Seattle and worked full-time as a technician in a research lab boasting a rarity in this world: a room dedicated solely to microscopy, that was, due to some meterological mystery, consistently 8°F cooler than room temperature. For most of my two years in the lab, it was a mere inconvenience. I'd puff my chest and, filled with the pride of one who walked to and from school countless times in frigid Midwestern winters, tough it out in short-sleeved shirts and sandals. But, one lab mate, raised in the American South, could not stand the temperature differential, and would bring sweaters or sweatshirts with her on days when she would spend several hours using one of the microscope. One summer day, however, she forgot a sweater, and I overheard the following conversation.
Labmate #1: "Darn it! I left my sweater at home!"
Labmate #2: "Doing a lot of microscopy today?"
Labmate #1: "Yeah. Do you have a sweatshirt I could borrow?"
Labmate #2: "Sure. Help yourself. You know where my Emergency Clothes are kept anyway."
Emergency Clothes! Long-dead neurons, unceremoniously poisoned form alcohol consumption, sprang back to life, Frankenstein-style. Electrical impulses cascaded across my cerebral cortex, reminding me of forgotten lessons of the Paper Suit. My eyes darted nervously over to the safety shower, positioned ominously over a small, sad drain. I shuddered at the mental image of my shaking body, drenched and drowned, pathetically covered in a dissovling paper suit. I attempted to return to my work, when I remembered that, the next day, I was slated to make several diluted solutions from our big jug of glacial acetic acid.
That night, I stood in front of my doorless closet and chose Emergency Clothing. Initially, I thought it would be a simple task: simply pick the most pathetic shreds of my wardrobe, place them in a sack, and keep them under my desk in lab. Unfortunately, my wardrobe was, and still is, a realm of pathetic mistakes.
As many of my friends know, I lack any reputable sense of fashion. I have often made gruesome mistakes when purchasing clothing, mistakes made all the more tragic since it would usually take months or years of wearing a particular item before the sheer folly of the choice would become blindingly obvious. This ignorance was further compounded by my easy access to cheap clothing, as a part time job I held through most of college put me behind the lead cash register of a discout clothing store. Though that job did have one quite positive result (that's how I met Zach), it also provided me with ample opportunity (and an employee's discount) to make many tragic errors in clothing choice. Most of these choices, months or years later, would be passed on to Goodwill, or reclassified as "yardwork" or "housepainting" clothes (a system which quickly broke down, since I do neither yardwork nor housepainting). In one case, I purposefully discarded a particularly hated pair of pants at a college boyfriend's house, a discovery which he did not make until, many months post-break-up, he was moving to Chicago, and I was on the West Coast for a summer internship. Hopefully, the pants found a good home on a scarecrow somewhere between his house and the outer suburbs of the Windy City.
But, that night, choosing Emergency Clothing, one truth became clear: I had retained many clothing mistakes from college, and dragged them with me from northwestern Illinois to Seattle. At the time, Zach and I had only been dating for several months. He sat on my bed reading a magazine as I closed my eyes and, in a display of abnormality from which he had thus far been spared, chose items at random from the "shameful" section of my closet. The results were stark. The choice of t-shirt was threadbare and a size too large for me in the shoulders, and boasted the crooked logo from the musical Rent. The pants were laughable: crisp, bright, babyblue jeans. For a sweatshirt, I chose a hasty purchase from the University of Iowa bookstore: a cheap zip-up hoodie with the University of Iowa logo barely perceptible among unravelling threads and cheap seams. For underwear and socks, I dug deep into my dresser drawers and chose the white variety. In my senior year of college, I'd fallen deeply into what can only be described as my mid-midlife crisis. At the age of twenty-three, I'd resolved to spice things up below the waist (since I was already past my sexual prime, and had spent too many years being a shy, mumbling basketcase in the local gay bars): from then on, I was going to buy only colored underwear and socks. As a result, today, the bulk of my underwear fleet is a rainbow of fruit-of-the-loom flavors, and the same can be said of my sock drawer. I did, however, retain a few pairs of white boredom for the hopefully-rare occasion where white pants are called for. Thus, a pair of white boxer-briefs and white socks were thrown into the bag of Emergency Clothing as well, along with a pair of noisy flip-flops stolen from a one-armed lesbian friend following my first (and so far only) foray into spelunking. Thus, my Emergency Clothes were assembled and brought into lab.
Along with a sense of dread, that bag of Emergency Clothes has been my constant companion ever since in my journey as a (hack) scientist. It's move with me to my lab adventures in graduate school, from one rotation to the next, and finally to my current thesis lab. But, I've never used them.
At least, not for an emergency.
Today was the second time I used my Emergency Clothes. The first came several months ago, when, caught in an unseasonable deluge just after my birthday, I became soaked-through-to-the-underwear while walking to work, and had to don the entire shameful outfit in a locker room. Unfortunately, I've apparently still set the fashion bar so low that it took five hours before any of my labmates or associates noticed; and, unfortunately, they were only first tipped off by the wet clothes draped over my desk.
Following that particularly humbling exercise, I vowed never to wear my Emercency Clothes again, unless I had first either cut a sleeve off of my shirt or gone through the rigors of a public striptease beneath the harsh flow of a safety shower. Unfortunately, when I made such a solemn vow, I did not take into account my fear of smelling bad.
It sounds like such a juvenile fear - smelling bad. I suppose it sounds so juvenile because its roots reach back into my juvenile years. I don't recall the age at which I first began to wear deodorant, but I do know that I only started following a suggestion from my parents. When it came to the pain of childhood and teenage social interactions, my parents subscribed to the School of Gentle Prodding. For the most part, they only spoke up when it became pathetically obvious that I was not going to figure some obvious truth out on my own. In the case of deodorant, they had to buy me my first stick, along with some gentle prodding: "Here. Use this." A few years later, they repeated this exercise with a small selection of cologne brands. The implications were appalling: I smelled bad. Beyond the truth of the moment, however, I had to admit the obvious: to reach the point where intervention from my parents became necessary, I obviously had been smelling bad for quite some time.
Since then, I've gone above and beyond the call of duty when it comes to my smell. As Zach can attest, I apply deodorant with abandon daily. As anyone who's sat close to me in a public setting (bus, concert hall, etc.) can attest, I also often overdose on cologne as well. I fear offending and disappointing others with my soiled, or even natural, scent, and I find bathing daily insufficient. Zach once asked me why I don't hold the rest of humanity to the same standard. I would've answered, but I was too busy smelling a once-worn pair of jeans to see if they smelled to bad to wear a second day.
Today, I hastily dressed, as I'd overslept. My pants of choice were a beloved pair of jeans, worn for a half day over the weekend, and again on Tuesday. My shirt, hoodie (standard uniform for the past two years), blue underpants, and blue socks were fresh from the dryer.
Two hours later, I was standing in lab between two labmates. One of them, A, turned to me with a curious look on her face.
A: "James, do you smell something?"
Me: "Huh? Like what?"
A: "Well... I don't really know... it's... it's something musky and dank... pretty awful, actually."
pause
Me: "Oh, God! No! Noooo! I'll be right back."
I bolted to my desk, grabbed the bag of Emergency Clothes, and within thirty seconds, I'd stripped down to my underpants in the stall of the Mens Restroom. I cringed as I slipped one leg, and then the other, into the painfully bright blue jeans. I raised the thrice-worn pair of jeans I'd put on that morning up to my nose. "Surely," I thought to myself, "These must be the cause... the cause of such discomfort to my friends and colleages... they probably noticed it as soon as I walked in this morning, and have spent hours trying to find a way to tell me that my clothes stink, and they hate me..." It was the sum of all fears. I'd failed to smell good. I smelled my pants and shirt, and came to the conclusion that my allergies were dampening my sense of olfaction: I found no offensive smell.
Yet, several minutes later, when I walked back into lab, clad in Emergency Clothing, A announced that the scent had vanished. I held up the bag, which held the smelly clothes I'd worn that morning.
Me: "That's because these are the source of the smell."
A: "What?"
Me: "My clothes. They stink."
A: "Really?"
Me: "Well, I know it's not me. I smelled myself in the bathroom - I'm all deodorant and cologne. So, it must be these."
A: "I'm not sure, James."
Me: "Well, the smell is gone, right?"
A: "I suppose... what do your clothes smell like?"
Me: "I can't let you smell them."
I dumped the clothes in my backpack, and suffered through two seminars, one meeting, and a day of experiments clad in an unravelling University of Iowa hoodie, a threadbare Rent t-shirt, and babyblue jeans. Seven hours later, A and I stood next to each other once again, in the same spot.
A: "Hey, do you smell that?!"
Me: "What?"
A: "What I smelled this morning! I smell it again!"
Me: "Oh, God... not again!! It's me again, isn't it!!!"
A leaned it to smell me, and denied that the foul scent was emanating from my person. We looked around us. Next to us sat the lab's incubator, reserved from growing bacteria (though we're a fish lab, bacteria remain a powerful tool for molecular biology and genetics). A labmate, the same labmate who stood next to us seven hours prior when A first smell the horrid scent, had the incubator door wide open, and was retrieving petri plates from its vast interior.
A: "Hey James! It's the incubator! That's what I was smelling this morning. Something horrid was growing in the incubator."
I frowned and glanced down at my hideous wardrobe. For a moment - just a moment - stripping beneath the running safety shower seemed a more fashionable alternative to how I'd spent the past seven hours.
By that revelation, the day was through. Seattle was being pounded by a horrific storm blowing in off the Pacific. The radio had already announced road closures within the city due to flash flooding, mudslides, horrific accidents, and landslides. The rain fell in sheets. I hung my head low, still glancing down at my hideous wardrobe, as I walked toward home. Two minutes after leaving lab, I was soaked through. Several minutes later, I passed a restaurant. A woman sat outside, poorly sheltered by a torn awning, smoking a cigarette. She glanced up at me.
"Hon, you're soaked through to the bone! This shower ain't safe!"
I patted the clothes I'd put in my backpack earlier, looked up, and smiled.
"It's okay. These are just my Emergency Clothes!"
Posted by James at December 14, 2006 06:20 PM