My dad used to be a police officer in South Africa. He had several interesting artifacts from his time there.

One such artifact was an unmarked black cylinder with a spray nozzle. One day after school, I had managed to get locked out of one section of the house and could only get into the kitchen and my dad's office. (Houses in SA often have security gates inside locking off sections of the house.)

It was sitting in this office, waiting for someone else to get home and let me in that I absent mindedly started playing with this cylinder. I sprayed a small bit out. It made made a really cool heat haze effect in the air. Awesome, but what the fuck was this stuff? Well I'd just had a highschool science lesson on how to test an unknown gas... you waft it towards yourself, you do not sniff it directly. So I sprayed out a bit more and wafted it carefully towards my face...

Instant regret. My nose felt like I'd just done a netti pot of hot sauce. Eyes streaming, snot dripping.

Lesson 1 learned. Don't play with random cylinders of mysterious chemicals.

I found out later that it was tear gas.

Hey pop quiz: What's the worst thing you can do if you get tear gassed?

That's correct! My dumb ass ran straight for the kitchen tap. Lesson 2. DO NOT USE WATER to clean off tear gas. I will say that I knew IMMEDIATELY that I had fucked up a second time. Felt like my entire face was on fire. Baaaad times!