A BOMB?

Today I was faced, once again in my life, with the reminder of how fragile life is.

A few weeks back I was helping out at the pharmacy, where I work, with cleaning up. I love organizing and so I was helping them clean out some old bottles of expired medications and stuff that had been around since the pharmacy opened - 40 years ago, or more.

One of our trusty Pharmacy Tech's, Alisa, gave me the address for the North Seattle hazardous waste drop off site. I took the box of 20 or so bottles, old meds, and needles and left it in the back of my car. I figured I'd drop it off when I was in the North Seattle area.

While driving around a few days I realized that I wasn't going to take this box up north anytime soon, so I decided, rather than leave the box in my car where the heat could possibly cause problems with the chemicals I'm toting around, I would leave the entire box in the pharmacy.

I would find out later that this was a very good choice.

Today I realized I was going north for work AND it was a Tuesday (one of three days the north hazard site is open). I grabbed the box, rattling all of the bottles inside around, and threw it in my car. Racing around, as I typically do (driving my poor Prius like it's the Z3 I had before), I went from one account to another.

Then, at 14:30 hours, I finally made it to the hazard waste site.

I drive in and all around there are signs that indicate this is a hazardous area: "warning," "hazardous material," "danger," etc.

I patiently wait for the car in front of me to dispose of his material, as the employee was helping him do so. Then, as directed by the employee, I pull forward.

I grab the box, shaking it around still, and throw it on the cart this guy brings out. He asked, "What's in the box?"

I opened it and after he saw all the bottles he said I needed an inventory sheet. I was in a hurry and really just wanted to drop the box off and go, but I had to fill out this darn form.

The guy told me to park my car off to the side, so he can help the next person. I did. While pulling all of the bottles out of the box and filling out the inventory form a female employee, Lisa, came up to me to help out.

She was going through the different bottles and organizing them in a way so I could read the labels easily and fill out the form quicker. While she was moving the bottles around she came across one that made her jump back.

She looked up at me and shockingly questioned, "You have picric acid!?"

I stared back with a puzzled expression.

She went on, "Do you realize what this is?"

Before I could answer she ran into the main building. Just a few seconds later, as I went back to filling out my form, she came out with who must have been the person in charge. This guy looked at the bottle and immediately told the employees "Close the gates!"

I just stood straight up, looking at everyone hustle around, and wasn't sure what was going on.

Lisa asked her boss, "Someone made it in the front gate. Should we help them really quick, just as the last person?"

"No. We need them out of here." He said immediately then jumped on his cell phone.

The employees were arguing with the woman who wanted to drop off her hazardous material. She wanted to drop it off and they kept telling her she needed to leave and they couldn't tell her why. I understand why she was upset, according to the signage the place was to be open for 2 more hours!

I overheard the calls the main boss made, and in-between calls asked him what was going on. He said he was on the phone with the Fire Marshall and also the bomb squad. Then asked me, "Do you realize what this is?"

"No. I was just asked to bring this up here," I nonchalantly replied.

He took the bottle of the picric acid, as he said, "Good thing you made it up here," as he was walking off.

Lisa was back with me now, so I figured I would finally get some answers. She was very friendly and, now that this picric acid was away, helped me again with my forms and the remaining bottles. I asked her, "what's going on?"

She told me that picric acid is explosive and the amount that I had, which was about half of the jar (the jar was about 3 inches tall and the same size around) was enough to blow up the entire facility.

WHAT the F^*#!!!???

She asked me more questions, took my contact information, then told me what her boss told them that morning. He told them that last night he had a dream that someone brought picric acid in and it blew up the entire place. Odd coincidence.

I thought that was rather odd that the boss dreamt this and now the first part was coming true. I also thought, "What the hell am I still doing here?" But they weren't done with me. I didn't want the entire dream to come true while I was standing there. Not that I wanted it to come true at all, of course.

She also told me that I was lucky it didn't explode in my car and that it was really a good thing that I didn't leave it in my car. She said the slightest disturbance could set it off. I was driving around with a freakin' bomb! Great!

As soon as they had all of the information they needed from me, they let me go. I was happy to get out of there, drive past the gate, and when I left they shut the exit gate as well. I didn't hear any explosion when I drove away or news about an explosion today, so I'm assuming all went well in the destruction of this substance.

Whew! I live another day.