curiosity killed the cat

The following should not be tried at home.

My roommate has an awesome protective father (so do I by the way) who has so kindly supplied our apartment with pepper spray. Last night one of my friends and I were intrigued by said pepper spray and decided to see just exactly how it works/what it is. He was anxious at first to spray it so I took it, held it away from both of us and gave it a timid spray. A few drops dripped onto the floor, but nothing major and it was actually very anticlimactic. Then my friend took it and gave it a good spray into my kitchen sink just to see what would happen.

Let me tell you, I sincerely hope that I never have to smell that stuff again, much less get sprayed with it.

Even smelling into my sink from a distance sent both of us into coughing fits that lasted a solid 5 minutes - not counting the random coughing fits that came throughout the rest of the night. Once our coughing would calm down, just trying to say something would set it off again. It was CRAZY. After a long walk and some fresh air, both of us were feeling better and decided to go back to my house. The chemicals were still in the air enough to make us start hacking again, but not as bad as before. And I was able to sleep in my house last night without any problems. Don't worry, my sink is currently soaking in bleach to rid it of both the smell and the funny brownish yellow color.

Moral of the story: don't ever do anything that would make you get sprayed with pepper spray. It is a WAAAAY better self defense tool than I could have ever imagined - and I only smelled the stuff from a distance! I am pretty sure that it would incapacitate anyone who got sprayed for a good long time.