Your Self-Defense Tip of the Day

I honestly thought my Dad would be the last person to catch on to the internet.  He is your prototypical late adapter – he drove our family van (purchased 1985) until about three years ago – it got so bad, he had to start the ignition with a flat head screwdriver he kept in the glove compartment. (That is not a joke.)  I’m pretty sure for the last four years, it only had three wheels. (That was kind of a  joke.)

Anyway, much as we take away driver\’s licenses from the elderly who can’t drive, I propose revoking internet privileges from old people that think they need to forward on EVERY piece of junk mail they get.  Every day, I get a new chain e-mail from my Dad – obviously, none of them say “Send this to 10 people and your son won’t despise you.”  Because he does, and I do.  (Okay, not really.)

I thought the one he sent me yesterday about the inventor of the Tootsie Roll was the last straw.  But then, he passed along a new “hot tip” for personal safety. (My safety tip for him would be to stop sending me this junk, so I don’t smack him in the head next time I see him.)

This new tip goes as follows: If you don’t feel like carrying a gun, and if you can’t get your hands on pepper spray, then you should carry the next best thing – WASP SPRAY.  To quote directly from the e-mail:

The wasp spray, they told her, can shoot up to twenty feet away and is a lot more accurate, while with the pepper spray, they have to get too close to you and could overpower you. The wasp spray temporarily blinds an attacker until they get to the hospital for an antidote.

(SIDE NOTE: An “antidote?”  Doesn’t this only work if you’re being attacked by Lex Luthor?)

So you heard it here first – carry around a can of wasp spray if you want to avoid being attacked by sexual predators.  And wasps.

One small thing, though – aren’t those cans of wasp spray pretty big?  How am I supposed to stick a giant can of insect spray in my pants without getting some kind of indecency ticket?  If you have to carry around something that big, you might as well just put your own sexual predator in your pocket, so he can molest the other sexual predator before he gets to you.

A final point – each city should have at least one store that carries all the products that people still think are legal, but have for some reason been banned for no good reason.  It’ll be a giant store of pepper spray, laser pointers, and plug-in hot pots.  (Each of which I have tried to buy in the past year, remembering they were once commonly accepted, only to be told they are not sold anymore.)  Soon, tube-shaped sausages will be on the list.  And once people start spraying wasp killer in each others’ faces, Raid will be on the shelves at the contraband store, too.  I give it until 2013, tops.