Caution
The majority of warning labels make sense immediately. A good thing, since if the warning sign on electrified wire was a bit confusing, we'd figure it out ourselves the hard way anyway. But then there are those that make sense, but are completely redundant. We know we're not supposed to eat poison. And then there are...these.
I found this on the plastic wrapper covering a Dell keyboard. I guess Dell is anticipating infants installing brand-new keyboards, then playing with the wrapper and accidentally suffocating themselves. Furthermore, if you're the kind of guy who leaves plastic bags around where your baby might get to it, you're probably also the kind of guy who lets his dog play with his kid, or leave the baby strapped in the car "for a second," meaning that baby probably has got bigger problems than a keyboard wrapper.
The way I see it, the warning label is an example of the rut we Westerners have dug ourselves into. In order to explain the rut I speak of, I first have to explain something else. As a breed, lawyers are geniuses, on the order of Houdini. The Great Magician managed to get out of boxes without ever breaking a lock. Lawyers get people out of trouble by proving they never broke a rule. Lawyers have a lot in common with magicians. They're steeped in illusions, be it visual or oratory. Lawyers create the illusion of absence of evidence, even though it's right there on the table. "The blood-stained murder weapon does not exist, as the DNA evidence doesn't connect my client to it." Bam, that knife is gone! Lawyers, like magicians, can stun audiences by making elephants appear from nowhere. We are all familiar with the 2-ton elephant that lawyers conjured up out of a (very hot) crappy cup of McDonald's coffee. I have a lot of respect for lawyers; I fear them too.
The rut we're in is as a result of the aforemented elephants. Class-action lawsuits cost a company a million or two dollars, and lead to a whole new product packaging restructuring. Now, I can't pick up a box of cereal without reading all the things that it doesn't have in it that causes cancer, which its competitors most certainly do. Or read on the package of a bar of soap that I can't put it on the floor of the shower, or I risk great bodily harm. Or how many different ways my cell phone will kill me.
We're immune now. The bright red and orange colors that used to catch our attention, they blend right in. Every minute of the day, every product we use, anywhere we go, we're warned of how we'll die, and we ignore nearly every single one of them. It's not that there are more ways for us to die now, it's just that it's now required by law that the products we want tell us how they'll kill us. We don't shop for the product that will help us most, we look for the one that promises to kill us the slowest. The lawyers made labels magically appear everywhere.
But it is the consumers that have made death common. It is we who have carved out the heart of Death. We are not afraid of it anymore. We've been told so many times that we're going to die, that we just don't believe them anymore.
I blame the unisex person who warns us by example every day that we'll be eletrocuted, how we'll lose a limb, risk head trauma, and what happens when we reach into the bottom of a stalled lawnmower. I blame the lawyers. I blame us.
In ten years, I expect to log onto some news website and read about how hospitals are now labeling babies with indemnity clauses. Stickers on the stomach of every patient, just born or about to die, stating that the hospital is not responsible for any damage that the patient incurs during their stay. That the only way to close a loophole is to simply put the defensive legalese onto a sticker and label every single patient. Or that we be required to sign release forms before entering Burger King, allowing our image to be videotaped on their security cameras. I wait for the day I have to carry a card that lists all my medical problems, which must be presented to every waiter anywhere I go, to protect the restaurant from lawsuits that their 30 oz. ribeye steak caused your fat-clogged, wheezing, 60-year-old disease-ridden heart to stop. I'm waiting for the day that I have to prove my citizenship at the checkout line to protect corporations from federal prosecution that the corporation sells products to terrorists.
You've been warned.
