All is not right here

Bein's as I'm not much more than 18, the way I act, it's not fair for me to be critical of teenagers.  

But I have to wonder what the Tide is carrying in, so Snuggle up a minute while I use my Arm & Hammer to say I don't Cheer for this new trend I read about, and I don't see what Gain can come of it.  And I see no good coming from the idea to Wisk it out of my mind.

We're talking about teenagers putting laundry pods in their mouths.

I will repeat this: Teenagers are putting laundry pods in their mouths.

And I know, you want to say, take that out of your mouth, put it in the Maytag, and run of load of whitey-tighties.

Apparently, this latest dumb craze began when some people thought Tide Pods looked like candy. These people, however, were toddlers, whose parents are supposed to be keeping them from toxic substances such as laundry detergents.  

So much for that.  Last year, more than 10,500 exposures to highly concentrated packed of laundry detergent by children 5 and younger were reported to poison control centers.


And then, last March, the never-funny College Humor website ran a video called Don't Eat The Laundry Pods, which purported to show a college student gobblin' Tide pods.

And of course, others had to follow suit.  And people who ought to know better are putting these dumb soapbombs in their mouths.  I guess that One Chip Challenge with the red-hot potato chip laden with nuclear pepper was too boring.

In case anyone is wondering, ingesting laundry detergent can put one in a life-threatening situation, according to Dr. Alfred Aleguas Jr., managing director of the Florida Poison Information Center in Tampa.  Even if you bite into the pod and spit out the contents, you're running the risk of diarrhea and vomiting, and breathing problems if the fluid seeps into your lungs.

Hey, the emergency department of a hospital is a fun place to be, right?

"Our laundry pacs are a highly concentrated detergent meant to clean clothes … They should not be played with, whatever the circumstance is, even if meant as a joke," Tide said in a statement.

I looked this up: So far, the earliest finds of modern Homo sapiens skeletons come from Africa. They date to nearly 200,000 years ago on that continent. 

That's 200,000 years of human evolution, growth, development, learning and culturalization.  I'm pretty sure we can do better than putting detergent in our mouths.