As long as I can remember, I've been intrigued by the mystique of gas masques. I even took one to school for show and tell in Mrs. Jacob's class when I was in third grade. That day, one of the hicks who bussed in from Rush Valley**** grabbed it from me after school, got on the bus, and I never saw it again. I was crushed. I don't know why I didn't tell someone about the incident. In retrospect, I probably could have got it back had I made an issue about it, but the kid who took it was three years older than me, a sixth grader, and I felt powerless to do anything about it.
Now I have a variety of gas masques...Israeli, Soviet, Hungarian, and etc... and some of them are actually functional. I even had the opportunity to use one one day while doing laundry, when I accidentally dropped an open jug of bleach in a poorly ventilated room, and approximately two cups of bleach spilled out. Chlorine gas quickly filled the room and began to burn my eyes and lungs. I immediately remembered my good old, never before used, Israeli made gas masque, and ran to my bedroom to retrieve it. Within minutes, the hazardous spill was cleaned up.
Viva la masque!
**** Rush Valley is the collective name for the tiny little farming communities of Clover and Saint John... the outer limits beyond civilization... the nether world of Tooele County. Their school had been closed, therefore they were bussed to my school, and they brought their back-woods, gas masque stealing, barbaric ways with them.
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