Just doing a routine procedure of opening and discarding old expired laundry detergent, I had a stray drop of liquid soap missile-shoot me in my unprotected eyeball.

Soap. That’s all it was. But soap’s job is to break down biological components and release them from where they are held bound. Well it went straight to work on the biological components of my eye ball.

It stung. It stung a lot. The thought of the possibility that I had ruined my eye forever more than passively occupied my thoughts.

I flushed the eye with water at the eye wash station, just as we’re told to do so. I flushed again and again.

Eventually it stopped stinging and just became sore, swollen, and goopy.

I went to an eye doctor the next day and had the eye checked out. I found I had burned part of the white of the eye but no real permanent damage. I did, however, had to endure yet another, but professional, eye flush.

The eye still hurts today and it will for a short time; it already shows signs of improvement. But I have to sit back and wonder what I should learn from this.

Wear eye protection? That would seem logical, but I doubt I would hunt down a pair for just opening buckets of soap. So maybe, just look away when the pull tab pops off. Old dog-new tricks thing, I guess.

Don’t take your vision for granted? (Granite for some people out there). I did wonder what it would be like if I lost my sight in that eye. Made me re-think the eye protection thing for a few minutes. I feel grateful that I have vision. I think I already try to take a healthy note of the things around me now, but maybe I should take even that few extra moments to soak it all in a little deeper. There’s no guarantees that my vision will always be with me, with or without my stupidity.

I believe the true lesson to take from this episode is more obvious than the other two.

Delegation.

(I kid of course)