Soap In The Eye

Do you remember when you were a child, and getting the Johnson&Johnson "no-tears" shampoo in your eye made you cry like your cat just died? Then, growing up, you realized, hey, this stuff is rather mild. Eyes get tougher, or rather, desensitized, as you age.
Enter Selsun Blue.
This stuff has Selenium Sulfide in it. Now, I don't know the exact properties of Selenium Sulfide, but my understanding is roughly this: the skin on your scalp is whining and complaining about some irritation or other, so you send in Selenium Sulfide, which basically says "You want me to give you somethin' to cry about?!!" This is one bad dude. In just a few minutes of contact , you get no more whining from your scalp for at least a day. Now, as adults, we have graduated from the days of sloppy shampooing. We can sense where our hairline ends, and have the advantage that it is further from our eyes each passing day. We can get it all sudsy, without missing spots OR getting any in our eyes. That's just one of the perks of adulthood. How-ev-er....there are those infrequent accidents that remind us of childhood trauma.
Several years ago, when I first discovered the usefulness of Selsun Blue, I also discovered the curiously strong cap on the cap of the Selsum Blue bottle. It's stiff to open, requiring considerable thumb-strength and stiffness. They do not want children opening this product. Fair enough. And it's not just the latch which is stiff, the hinge on that cap is also quite robust; give a little push and it'll snap shut like a venus-flytrap. Always close your eyes before doing this. On that day, years ago, which I still remember vividly, I was unaware of this rule. One tiny droplet of the soap launched from the cap, directly onto my cornea, triggering sensations similar to the ones I experienced when I sprayed flat-black spraypaint in my eyes, or the time I had my corneas scratched by an ice-laden snowball. (I mean shards of ice, not to be confused with the microcrystals in snow, which couldn't scratch corneas.) So, from that day forward, I have diligently closed my eyes immediately preceding the closing of the Selsun Blue cap. (Forget what you hear about needing to hear something 15 times before you learn it; that's not always true.)
Last night, as I lay in the tub (imagine a Northern Pike in a sardine can) shampooing my hair, with Selsun Blue, I let some ride the water droplets down into the corner of my left eye. This brought back all those old memories and furnished me with some of the finer details that I had forgotten from my first experience, which I will now relate to you.
All the pain was still there, nothing new to add on that score. Here's what I had forgotten: hazy vision! For several hours after flushing out my eye with water, I found the vision in my left eye to be impaired as though I wore a pair of slightly foggy, or grease-smudged glasses. "How long is this supposed to last?" I asked myself. And, "How many more chances will I get, before this effect becomes permanent?", I added.
This morning I can still feel tenderness in the area where that most impressive concoction of a shampoo penetrated my eye. I don't know whether to blame or cheer animal-rights activists. In any case, the animal-testing has been done, the results are not hazy: avoid getting this soap in your eye.