Flashlights Are Fun!

This is going to be another one of those posts that convinces people I’m a mean person. I maintain my argument that all it proves is that I have a self-deprecating sense of humor.

At work (yup, I’m talking about work again, because I get oh-so-many requests for that), we issue everyone flashlights. I have one myself. This past year, a new line of flashlights has been released that have a high-powered LED at the core.

These flashlights are amazing. It’s like having a tiny spotlight in your hand. In a brightly lit area, you can stand at the far end of the room, point one at the far wall, switch it on, and see the glowing circle of light clearly. Try that with an incandescent flashlight and you wouldn’t see a thing. (These things are also prohibitively expensive, so odds are low that you've seen one already. They make those little keychain LED's that are so popular look like fireflies.)

Here’s why I find this topic funny. These flashlights used to ship with a sticker on the projection lens that said something like, “Do not stare directly into the flashlight beam.” That was sensible advice.

The flashlights don’t come with those stickers anymore. Care to guess why? I’ll give you a few lines of scrolling to try to think of the reason yourself.

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They don’t ship with the sticker anymore because about 85% of the people who saw that sticker put batteries into the flashlight, read the sticker, peeled the it off the lens, pointed it directly at their eyes, and turned it on.
You’re probably skeptical of my 85% figure. That’s fair. But remember, I decided to write about this topic for some reason. That reason is that I witnessed that sequence of events happen. Many, many times.
Now that they don’t ship with stickers, the problem seems to have completely gone away.

Here’s where I prove that I’m making fun of myself and not just being a tool. Remember how I said I have one of these flashlights? Admittedly, I have never shined the thing directly into my eyes just to see what it was like. The sticker sounded pretty reasonable to me at the time. However, sitting here writing about this has made me realize that I don’t know what it feels like to shine the flashlight directly in my eyes. I kind of want to. I’m not going to, but I still think that wanting to do it while I sit here typing this is worse than ignoring the sticker. Instinct is one thing, but self-aware stupidity is outright dangerous.

I wonder what would happen if I started a thumbtack factory, but instead of leaving the plastic cases holding the tacks blank, I decided to print “Not to be used as suppositories” in large letters on each one.