Don’t believe it. I found out the hard way that ignorance is not always bliss.

While attending college, I worked part-time in a hematology lab. Part of my duties there were prepping blood slides for pathologists to study under a microscope. One day, I snatched a flask full of slides off the counter and quickly spun around.

Being the klutz that I am, I should’ve known better.

The flask flew out of my hand and crashed onto the floor. It shattered, which strew the slides all around. I immediately went about picking them up when my supervisor ran up to me. “We’ll clean this up. You run to the bathroom, take off your pants and wash your legs now!”

Those slides had been soaking in Xylene. Let’s just say it’s not a nice chemical that you want to come in contact with your skin. And it had been spilt down my pant legs when the flask took flight.

So, I ran to the bathroom and immediately washed my legs, which had already turned pink. The pantyhose I wore under my pants had begun to come apart.

Needless to say, I didn’t have any extra clothes at work. Tim was at work himself, so I couldn’t call him to bring me some pants. My supervisor asked one of the utility guys in the lab to look for a pair of scrubs for me to wear.

At that time, scrubs hadn’t become popular yet and very few people in the hospital wore them.

So, there I stood in the bathroom, with no pants. Finally, the utility guy found a pair of scrubs that were small enough to fit me. I didn’t ask questions. I immediately put them on and was happy to be out of my bathroom prison.

It so happened that it was payday and I had numerous stops to make on my way home. I left my lab coat in the locker and went on my errands.

At my first stop, I began to notice something strange. Everywhere I walked, people stepped away from me. I’m not talking 2 or 3 steps. I’m talking 2 or 3 feet, sometimes more. That also happened to me at the next store. Everywhere I walked, it was like the parting of the Red Sea.

I assumed I still reeked of Xylene. Let me tell you, that stuff could peel the blue off of the sky. I think that’s why I seemed to have lost some of my sense of smell.

My last stop was the grocery store. Yep, I cleared several aisles.

I pushed my buggy up to the cashier and she immediately jumped away from me. No exaggeration. She bumped into the metal half wall behind her. It was as if she couldn’t get far enough away from me.

“Where do you work?” Her eyes were wide.

“In a hematology lab,” I answered.

“What do you do there?”

That was it. I was tired of people treating me like I had leprosy or the bubonic plague. “Why? What’s the big deal?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t you know what’s on the back of your pants?”

“My pants?” I was a expecting her to ask why I smelled like I did. The back of my pants never entered my mind. “No…. why?”

“You have “MORGUE” written on your pants in big black letters.”

When she told me that, I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me. As soon as I got home, I ran into the bathroom and looked into the mirror. Yep. The cashier was correct.

No wonder people were trying to get away from me as far and as quick as they could. And I probably still did have somewhat of a chemical smell. Oh my, what must’ve gone through their minds.

“A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.” Proverbs 22:3n (KJV)

In this scenario, I would say I was the simple one. Being ignorant of what was written on the back of my scrubs, I pressed on. I assumed my smell was why people were desperate to avoid me. I should have been prudent and looked over the scrubs and just went on home as soon as I realized something was rather amiss.

But I do think those who were unfortunate to be near me that day were the ones who were really punished.